Konstantin Korenevskiy
Saturday, October 29, 2011
The Tale of the Revolution and the Personality -
This story is about revolutionary socialist transformations in the newly
created Lithuanian jurisdiction from 1918-1920.
From marerials archive of cases of State security Soviet Union, original
Lithuanian language.
Grit your teeth and read... read or watch the movie - "Film Chekist"
based on story, sorry but only russion language .
The story about time of the creation of the Lithuanian Socialist
Republic on the bones of the Russian Empire and the East Prussia !
2015 - The Union of Lithuanian National Youth celebrated the return of Vilnius and
condemned the "intrigues of American and German Polish imperialists"
I
A column of trucks drove into the courtyard, iron wheels clattered on the
paved yard and the whole stone house shook much so that on the third floor on
Srubov’s table the copper lids of the inkwells clinked. Srubov turned pale.
The members of the assembled board and the investigator nervously and hastily
to lit. Everyone hid behind their own curtain of smoke - eyes to the floor.
In the basement of the house, Holy Father Vasily raised his pectoral
cross above his head - 'Brothers and sisters, let us pray one last time.'
A dark green cassock, a belly spread downwards, a round bald skull - a
moldy mallow. He stood up in the corner. From the bunks, rustling, black
shadows crawled towards him. They crawled and groaning stuck to
the floor.
In another corner, turning blue, Lieutenant Snezhnitsky was wheezing.
Squeezing Snezhnitsky's head between his knees, Ensign Skachkov strangled him
with a short loop from his suspenders. Turning his broad back to the door, the
officer was in a hurry - he was afraid that they would notice. For himself he
had a sharp bottle fragment prepared.
And the cars kept knocking and knocking in the yard, and everyone in
this three-story stone house knew that they had been sent for the removal of
corpses. At the priest's the hand with a cross stuck out from a wide sleeve
like a fat, hairy snake. Pale faces rose from the floor, at everyone a dead,
fading eyes crawled out of their sockets and watered. Everyone saw the cross
differently. For some only this a narrow silver plate. For some - a sparkling
star. For some are only black emptiness. The priest’s tongue stuck to the roof
of his mouth, to his lips, and his lips were purple and cold.
- In the name of father and son...
There is gray sweat on the gray walls and frost in the corners, like the
white openwork lace of perpetual, never-ending frost. The words of prayers
rustled across the floor like falling leaves. People trembling were rushing
about in a cold sweat and fixed be walls - the wall has the indestructible
hardness of stone.
Commandant. The commandant is wearing a red cap, red riding breeches, a dark
blue tunic, a brown English sword belt over his shoulder, a crooked Mauser
without a holster, and sparkling boots and has a shaven, good-natured,
face like something out of an advertising poster from a hairdresser's window.
In the office entrededcompletely silently. He entered and froze in the
doorway, stretched out. Srubov raised his head slightly.
- do all ready ?
The commandant answered briefly, loudly, almost shouting:
- All ready.
And he froze again. Only the eyes, with piercing pupils and a sharp glassy
sheen restless.
Srubov and the others sitting in the office had the same eyes - glassy,
sparkling, and alarmed.
- take them to be out from first five. I now.
Without haste, he filled the pipe. As if saying goodbye saying, he shookid
hands to all, but didn't looking in the eye. Morgunov did not shake hands. -
I'll go with you'll just to see
This is his first time at Cheka. Srubov paused and winced. He put on a black
sheepskin coat and a long-eared red hat. He lit a cigarette a goto the
corridor.
Tall, heavyset Morgunov in a sheepskin coat and hat was slouching behind.
There are fiery blisters of lamps on the ceiling. Srubov pulled his hat by his
ears. He closed his forehead and half his eyes and looked at him feet. Gray
wooden parquet squares, it's as if they were strung on a string and pulled.
They crawled under Srubov’s feet, and he himself, not knowing why, them
quickly counte:
-...Three...seven...fifteen...twenty-one...
There are gray wooden parquet squares on the floor, the department signs are
white on the walls. He didn't look, but he saw. They are also on a rope.
...Secret operational... counter-revolution... no entry... banditry...
crime...
He counted out sixty-seven gray ones and lost count, stopped and turned back.
He looked irritably at Morgunov’s red mustache. When he understood, he knitted
his eyebrows and waved his hand and goto forward. Mentally he repeated:
“...Manti-ments... senti-ments... senti...” He was angry, but could not get
rid of it.
...senti-ments... ments-senti...
There is a sentry on the plat of way of stairs. And behind are this
spectator, an unnecessary witness. Srubov is disgusted that they are
looking at him, disgusted that is so lighting. And, here again is steps
of stair. And it started to again.
- ...Two... four... five... The area of stair is empty. Again:
-...One... two... eight...
Second floor. New sentry. Past, sideways.
More steps of stairs.
And More.
Last sentry. Quicker. Door. Yard. Snow. Lighter
than in the corridor.
And t here the bayonets. A whole palisade. And Morgunov, tactless,
sticks to the left sleeve, pesters to with the conversations.
In the basement of the house - father Vasily is with raised cross of
ortodocsan. The condemned are on their knees around him. They
tried to sing in chorus. But everyone sang separately.
- With the saints, we hope rest...
There are only five women. Men's voices are not heard. Fear
pressed steel hoops tightly around their chests, throats and pressed on them
and the men only creaked subtly, intermittently:
- With the saints... the saints...
The commandant also put on a sheepskin coat, yellow. And went down to
the basement with a white sheet of paper - a list. In basement of the
door to thundering with a heavy bolt.
The singers have no tongues. Mouths full of hot sand. Everyone
could not get up from their knees. They atcrawling into corners, onto
bunks, under bunks. A flock of sheep. Only a cat's squeal.
The priest, leaning against the wall, stuttered quietly:
- ... oop-po-po-o-o...
And loudly tospoiled the air.
The commandant waved the paper. His voice is raw, oppressive -
earthy. He named five names - as if he was filling earth on
they. There is no strength to move. The air became like a
disturbed cesspool. The commandant held his nose in disgust. To
him The long-moustached captain came up and asked:
- are leading us ?
Everyone knew - to shoting. They didn’t hear the verdict. They
dont wanted hear it. they didn’t want to, couldn’t perceive it, didn't want
understand reality. They want to again definitively to sure.
The commandant is stern and serious. He so directly, without blushing,
without embarrassment, he looked eye to eye of theyand declared:
- To Omsk.
Esaul chuckled and squat:
- along a underground road?
To colonel Nicitin also funny. He bent own back of guard and
beard:
- Hee hee...
And he did not feel or see that from under him and from under his neighbor,
General Treukhov, muddy did are streams were crawling along the bunks and on
the floor from them did are forment on the floor a swamp wich the steam.
Five were taken away. The door did are tightly blocked the exit.
The hatch into the yard clanged. Car noise is clearer. And this
car noise sounded like the knocking of clods of frozen earth on an iron
basement door. Those locked in felt like they were did are being buried
alive.
- Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu. phr-to-to. phr-to-to.
Captain Bozhenko stood up against the wall, hands on hips, raised his
head. There is a weak light bulb under the ceiling. The captain
winked at her.
- They won’t find me, brother.
And on all fours up to under the plank-bed.
From the corner, Lieutenant Snezhnitsky show everyone his blue dead
tongue. His body Skachkov, hid in this corner from the eyes of the
commandant, and he didn’t cut his own throat. He turne glassin hands,
but didn’t cut his own throat didn’t dare up.
A small fire bubble on the ceiling suddenly burst. The pus from it is
black resin ingot everyone's eyes. Darkness. In the darkness it is
not fear - despair. It is impossible to sit and wait. But walls,
walls. Brick floor. Crawling up and squealing up it. Nails,
teeth into damp stones.
They were led through a narrow snowy yard and Srubova, and to the five who
were brought out, it seemed that this narrow snowy yard was a white-hot metal
hall. Slowly rotating at the bottom of a three-story stone well,
he grabbed people from this hall and threw them into the hatch of another
basement at the opposite end of the yard. In the narrow throat of
the spiral staircase, the of them lost their breath, at two heads began to
spin, and they fell. They fell and the other three to were knocked
down up by them, so they rolled up in a heap onto the dirt floor.
The second basement without bunks is curved like a block letter 'L', in the
short hook of the stone letter, far from the entrance, there is darkness - in
the long tail is day. The lamps every five steps. All the
bumps and pits are visible on the floor. There's no hiding here.
The walls like brick rocks, welded together with sharp, clear corners.
And from above a stone empty-bellied block of the ceiling. Here can't
run away. In addition, the guards from behind, in front, from the
sides. Rifles, checkers, revolvers, red stars. There is more iron
and weapons than people.
The “wall for shot exicution” turned white at the border between the light
tail and the unlit bend. Five doors stood at the brick wall, torn from their
hinges. About five doors, five security officers. They hold large revolvers in
their hands and triggers of revolvers with hammers as the form of black
question marks.
Here the commandant stopped the condemneds and ordered:
- Take off your clothes.
An order for condemneds this is like a blow. All five of them jerked and
their knees buckled. Srubov to seement felt that the commandant’s
order applied to him as well anf unconsciously he unbuttoned his sheepskin
coat. At the same time, reason convinced him that this was nonsense,
that he was a member of the Gubchek and should direct the execution. He
wich hard with effort what controlled himself . He looked at
the commandant, at the other security officers - no one paid attention to him.
The condemned undressed with trembling hands. Them stiffened fingers did not
obey. Buttons and hooks were not undoney. The laces and ties were
tangledey. The commandant gnawed on a cigarette and hurried:
- faster, faster...
One of them had his head stuck in his shirt, and he was in no hurry to free
it. No one wanted to undress first. They looked it sideways at
each other and hesitated. And the cornet Kashin did not undress at
all. He sat huddled, hugging his knees and stared dumbly at one point at
the toe of his rusty, torn boot. Efim Solomin approached him.
Revolver in his right hand behind his back, and left hand t'stroked it
head. Kashin shuddered, opened his mouth in surprise, and looked at the
chekist.
- What are you thinking about, my dear ? or scared up ?
And with hand everything stroked him hair.
Speaks quietly, in a singsong voice.
- Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, dear. Your death is still far
away. There is no scary thing yet. Let me help you take off your
jacket.
And tenderly and firmly and confidently with his left hand he to him unbuttons
officer’s jacket .
- Don't be afraid, my dear. Now let's take off the sleeve.
Kashin has become limp. He spread his arms out obediently, limply.
There is tears his face, but he didn't notice them. Solomin completely
mastered him.
-Now pants. Nothing, nothing, all good, my dear.
Solomin's eyes are honest, blue. The face is open which high
cheekbones. Only dirty patches on the chin and on the upper lip with a
sparse fringe. He to undressed Kashin like a caring orderly
patient.
- well,now and your under pantalon...
Srubov clearly and painfully understet and felt the hopelessness of the
situation of the condemneds. It seemed to him that the highest measure
of violence was not in the execution itself, but in this stripping. From
a clothe onto the bare ground. Undressed among the clothed. The
humiliation is extreme. The pressure of waiting for death was
intensified by the everydayness of the situation. Dirty floor, dusty
walls, basement.
Or maybe each of them dreamed of being the chairman of the Constituent
Assembly? Or perhaps being of the first ministerman of the
restored monarchy in Russia? Perhaps by the emperor himself?
Srubov also dreamed of becoming the People's Commissar not only of the
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
but even of the World Union of Soviet Socialist Federal Republics.
Awareness of own desire it didseemed to Srubov that now, what would shoot him
along with they. A cold, thin needles the prick on him back and,
his hands fiddled with his belt for holster wich gun and his coarse
beard.
In front of him, his pince-nez gleaming, stood a naked, bony man.
He undresed first. The commandant pointed him to nose and
said:
- take off this.
The naked leaned a little towards the commandant and smiled. Srubov saw
a thin, intelligent face, an cleven look and an light brown beard.
- What me then to make? After all, then I won’t even see the wall.
In the question, in the smile there is naiveness, kidishness. Srubov
hasing an thought : maybe no one is going to shoot anyone. And the
security officers laughed. The commandant dropped his cigarette.
- You're a nice guy, damn it. It's okay, we'll let you down. But
the pince-nez still need take off.
Another, corpulent, with black fur on his chest, to did say heavy bass
voice:
- I want to give my last testimony.
The commandant to looked at Srubov. Srubov came closer. Took
out his notebook and began to write down without thinking about the meaning of
the testimony, without criticizing it. He was glad that the decisive moment
had been little postponed. But the fat only liede, got confused,
and delaye to time.
- Near the forest, between the river and the swamp, in the bushes...
He said that the detachment of white in which he served buried a lot of
gold somewhere. But none of the security officers believed him. Everyone
knew that he was only trying to gain time. In the end, the condemned man
offered to postpone his execution, take him as a guide, and he would indicate
where the gold was buried.
Srubov put the notebook in his pocket. The commandant, laughing, patted
the naked man on the shoulder:
- Stop uncle to fucking us brains. Become to wall.
Everyone has already undresed. From the cold did rubbeding they hands
and stepined from foot to foot with bare feet. Linen and clothes are in
a motley heap. The commandant made a gesture with his hand - he
invited.
- Stand up at wall.
The fat man in black wool to howled and choked on his tears. A criminal
bandit with a dull, indifferent face approached one of the doors.
Crooked hairy legs with huge flat of feet, standed on legs well,
steadily. The thin-legged captain from the punitive detachment
shouted:
- Long live The Soviet Authority !
With a revolver against him, wide-nosed, broad-faced, shaven Vanka
Mudynya. He waved his sinewy, tattooed sailor's fist in front of the
captain and to say with through his teeth, with a grin:
- Don't shout - we won't will not have mercy.
The communist to sentenced for bribery, lowered his round, cropped head and at
the ground to said dully :
- Sorry, comrades.
And the cheerful one with a light brown beard, now without pince-nez, and here
made everyone laugh. He stood up at wall mading a stupid face:
- Here they are, the doors to the next world - without hinges. Now I
know to be.
And again Srubov thought that they would not to be shot. Ar here the
commandant, still laughing, ordered:
- Turn around.
The condemned did not understand.
- Turn your'll face to the wall and your back to us.
Srubov knew that as soon as they began to turned at back, five security
officers would simultaneously raise their revolvers and shoot each one
point-blank in the back of the head.
By the time the naked people finally understood what the clothed ones wanted
from them, Srubov managed to fill and light his extinguished pipe. Now
they will turned back around - and it’s over. The faces of the
guards, the commandant, the security officers with revolvers, and Srubov are
the same - intensely pale. Only Solomin stood completely calm. His
face is no more preoccupied than is necessary for ordinary, everyday
work. Srubov's eyes into the phone, into the light. And yet he
noticed how Morgunov, pale, gasped for air and turned away, but some force
pulled him towards the five naked ones, and he twisted his eyes at them.
The fire in smoking pipe to did flinch and It hurts to hitid in ears.
White raw carcasses of meat fell to the floor. The security officers
with smoking revolvers quickly did run away back and immediately to crack the
triggers.
At the those shot the legs of were twitching in convulsions.
The fat man sighed for the last time with a ringing squeal. Srubov
thought: “Is there a soul or not? Maybe it’s the soul that comes out wich such
squel?”
Two men in gray shenelles to did put nooses on the corpses’ feet and dragged
them into the dark corner of the basement. Two others wich shovels were
digging the ground, cover up steaming streams of blood. Solomin, with a
revolver tucked into his belt, was sorting the laundry of the executed.
He carefully did folded long johns to johns, shirts with shirts, and the
outer dress separatelys.
In next top five was priest. He no had control over himself. He
could barely drag the thick body on short legs and rattled subtly:
- Holy God - Holy Strong...
His eyes were bulging out of his sockets. Srubov remembered how his
mother made larks from dough and inserted eyes into them from raisins.
The priest's head looked like the head of a lark taken out of the oven with
raisin eyes swollen up from the heat.
Father Vasily fell to his knees:
- Brothers, dear ones, don’t kill me...
But for Srubov he is no longer a person - dough, a lark made of dough.
He don't was feel sorry for it at all his. The heart hardened with
anger. He clearly said through his teeth:
- Stop whining, God's pipe. Moscow does not believe in tears.
His rough firmness was an impetus to other security officers as well.
Mudynya twisting maked cigarette:
- Give him a kick in the stern - he will shut up.
Tall, make body Semyon Khudonogov and short, square, bow-legged Alexey Bozhe
grabbed the priest, threw him down, began to undress him. And he tightened it
again, rattling the glass in the cracked frame:
- Holy God, Holy Strong...
Efim Solomin stopped them:
- Don't touch Holy Father. He will undress himself.
The priest fell silent - his dull eyes turned to Solomin. Khudonogov and
Bozhe walked away.
- Brothers, don’t undress me. Priests are supposed to be buried in
vestments.
Solomin him affectionate.
- Those in Lopotin, my dears, are chizhel. Lopotina, she's pulling.
Pop was lying on the ground. Solomin was squatting over him, the tails
of his long gray overcoat pulled up on his knees, unbuttoning his black
grosgrain cassock.
- It’s nothing like that, my dear, that we’ll you to undress. And
you need did be could steam in the bathhouse. When a person is
clean it is best for him to die. One moment and away with all this
bakhterma from you, and you just like a bird your wings will spread.
At priest fine linen underwear. Solomin carefully untied the ankle
straps.
- In the lopoten, only murderers kill, but we don’t kill, we execute.
And execution, my dear, is a great thing.
One officer asked for a cigarette. The commandant gave it. The
officer lit a cigarette and, pulling his eyebrows together, calmly squinted
from the smoke.
- Our the shooting down execution you'll will not improve transport and solve
the food issue.
Srubov heard and became even more angry.
The other two were undressing, as if in the dressing room, laughing, chatting
about trifles, it seemed they didn’t notice anything, didn’t see and didn’t
want to see. Srubov looked at them carefully and realized that this was
just a masquerade - both of them had dead, dilated with horror eyes.
The fifth did be the woman, a peasant woman, she undressed, calmly crossed
herself and stand under revolver.
And with the cigarette, did thete having angered Srubov, did not want to
turn own back spinal.
- I ask you to shoot me in the forehead.
Srubov cut him off:
- I can’t break the tradition - we only shoot in the back of the head. I
order you to turn around back spinal.
A naked officer has a weaker will. Turned around and here he saw a lot
of holes in the wood of the door. And he to wanted to become a little,
little fly, slip into one of these holes, hide, and then find some crack in
the basement and fly out into the wild. ( In Kolchak’s army, he dreamed
of ending his service as a corps commander - a full general. )
And suddenly that hole that he had chosen for himself became a huge
hole. The officer easily jumped into there and died. The pupil in
his right open eye was as wide and uneven as the new hole in the door from the
bullet that had pierced his head.
Holy Father Vasily's belly is like dough that has fallen out of the kneading
bowl onto the floor. ( Father Vasily never thought of becoming a bishop,
but becoming an archdeacon was counting. )
They were all dragged by the legs at ropes into a dark corner. All of
them - each in their own way - dreamed of living and being someone. But
is it worth talking about this when only three or four pounds of fresh meat
are left from each of them?
The next five were not brought in until the blood be was washed up and
all the corpses were removed. The security officers were rolling
cigarettes.
- Efim, like a toad, do you always fiddling around with them? -
the square Boge asked. Solomin rubbed his finger under his nose.
- Why tease them and get angry at them? they are enemys until them
are caught. And here he are a dumb brute. I at home, when the
catles had to be beaten, it was always with affection. I come up, pet
it, stend, Burenka, stend. And she stend. And that’s
what I need, then and it’s convenient for me.
In shooting there were five shooters: Efim Solomin, Vanka Mudynya, Semyon
Khudonogov, Alexey Bozhe, Naum Nepomnyashchikh. None of them noticed
that there was a woman in the last five. Everyone saw only five pairs of
bloody carcasses of meat.
From them three shot like a automatguns. And their eyes were empty, with
a dead glassy shine. Everything they did in the basement was done almost
involuntarily. They waited for the condemned to undress and stand up,
mechanically raised their revolvers, fired, ran back, and replaced the shot
clips with a new. They waited for the corpses to be removed and new of
prisoners ones to be brought in. Only when the senteced screaming and
resisted did the blood of three foam with burning anger.
Thereupon they cursed, attacked with fists and the handles of their
revolvers. And thereupon, raising the revolvers to the backs of the
naked heads, they feel a cold trembling in their hands and in their
chests. This is out of fear for a mistake, wounded. It was
necessary to kill outright. And if the unfinished man squealed, coughed,
and spat blood, then it became stuffy in the basement, and they wanted to
leave and drink until he lost consciousness. But there was no
strength. Someone huge and powerful forced they to hastily raise them
hand and finish off the wounded man.
This is how Vanka Mudynya, Semyon Khudonogov, and Naum Nepomnyashchikh shot.
For Alexei Bozhe, all this exsicution and domination of prisoners brought
pleasure as a way of self-realization and satisfaction of
self-worth. Here he not only carried out his official duties, but
did it with passion to showed initiative.
Only Efim Solomin felt free and easy. He knew for sure that it was as
necessary to shoot the prisoners as it was necessary to slaughter
cattle. And just as he could not be angry at the cow, which was
obediently exposing its neck to him for a knife, so he did not feel any anger
towards the condemned, who turned their open heads towards him.
But he had no pity, compasion for those being shot. Solomin knew that
they were enemies of the social revolution. An he, Solomin served the
revolution willingly, conscientiously, as server to a good master. He
didn't shoot, but worked. In the end, it doesn’t matter to her who shot
and how. She Revoliution only needs to redistribute rights, privileges,
income, property and destroy enemies of this ideology.
After the fourth five, Srubov ceased to distinguish the faces and figures of
the condemned, to hear their screams and moans. Smoke from tobacco, from
revolvers, steam from blood and breath - a foul fog. White bodies was
glucing by, writhing in death throes. The living was crawled on their
knees and asking mercy. Srubov was silent, looked and smoked.
They dragged the executed people toout. They covered the blood with
earth. A undressed livings turneding the undressed deads.
Fivers after fivers.
At the dark end of the basement, one other security officer tooked
lowered from above into the hatch the hinges, did putined them on the necks of
the executed and did shouted to the abovemans:
- letdrag up !
Corpses with dangling arms and legs rose to the ceiling and disappeared.
And they led and led the living into the basement, defecating at their
underwear out of fear, sweating out of fear, crying out of fear. And the
steel legs of the trucks all stomped and stomped. With muffled sighs
from the dungeon into the courtyard and are did drage, and did drage.
The commandant approached Srubov and say:
- At us here a mashine, Comrade Srubov. The plant is mechanical.
Srubov nodded his head and remembered the fiery hall of the courtyard.
The hall is spinning, throwing people from basement to basement. And all
over the house there are lights and cars knocking. Hundreds of people
are busy around the clock. And then rrr-ah-rr-rrr-ah. Automatic
drills drill into skulls with a loud clang and crunch and red sawdust
splashes. The brain flies wich blood clots from the skulls
as the ground that they drill or pierce when they to dig an artesian well or
find oil. Sometimes the steel drills have to go through entire
thicknesses of stone, veins of ores... through bone layers of skulls and mushy
quagmires of brains in order to drill, get to clean land. And there are
geysers of blood in the sewers and pits. The basement is breathes and is
stuffyd with blood and caustic human excrement. And fog, fog wich smoke.
The lamps stare from the ceiling with blinding fiery eyes. On
walls cold perspiration. The earthen floor beats
feverishly. Yellow-red, sticky, stinking jelly stands underfoot
and air heavy with lead and it heavy to breathe.
Manufacturing, plant mechanical.
Rrr-ah-rrr-rrr-ah! And are dragged.
- A-ah-i-i. V-i-n-i !
Are dragged.
- I have valuable testimony. Stop the shooting. Fuck-ah-rr.
Are dragged.
- undress, becomes, face at wall.
- Ah-ah-ah. Ooo.
R-a-ahah.
Are dragged.
- Long live lord Emperor. Shoot, you red bastards. Lord have
mercy. Down with the communists. God have mercy me. And I
did shooted to you'll too, red pigs.
Rrr-rrr.
Are dragged.
- I innocently dying. Oooh.
- Drop it.
Rrr.
Are dragged.
No. plea to you.
Rrr-u-u-hhh.
Are dragged.
Vanka Mudynya, Semyon Khudonogov, Naum Nepomnyashchikh are deathly pale,
weariled unbuttoning their sheepskin coats with sleeves reddened with
blood. Alexey Bozhe is a maniac with the whites of his eyes
inflamed from bloody excitement, with a face splattered with blood, with
yellow teeth, a red snarl of his lips, and a mustache covered in black soot.
Efim Solomin with efficiency, serious and imperturbable, rubbing under his
snub nose removing clots of blood from his mustache beard, and did
straightene visor which had come off halfway from his green cap with a
red star.
But is she interest in this, her The Ideas of Social
Revolution? She only needs to force to kill ones, order others to
die, and that’s all. And the security officers, and Srubov, and
the condemned, were all insignificant pawns, small cogs in this spontaneous
run of the factory mechanism. In this factory, coal and steam are
this Her angry power, the mistress here She - cruel and to everyone to the
security officers own way beautifel.
And Srubov was wrapped in a black fur coat, wich red fur hat, in the gray
smoke of an undying pipe, felt Her breath. And from the feeling of the
proximity of that new intense energy, he muscles jerked, he veins tightened,
blood to did run faster. For Her and in Her interests, Srubov is ready
to do anything. For Her, murder is in a joy. And if necessary, he
will not hesitate to put bullets in the backs of the anyone heads himself, and
if even one the security officer will try to be a coward, try to retreat from
performing his official duties, he will immediately kill him on the
spot. Srubov is full of joyful determination.
All for Her and all for Her sake - The Idea of Social Revoliution.
But there were i oslozhneniya. The handsome young guardsman did not want
to undress. He curled his thin aristocratic lips and sneered:
- I'm used to being undressed by lackeys. I won't do it myself.
Naum Nepomnyashchikh angrily poked him in the chest with the muzzle of his
revolver.
- Take off your clothes, bastard.
- Give me the lackey.
Nepomniachtchi and Khudonogov grabbed the stubborn man by the legs and threw
him down. Next to them, half-strangled, unconscious
General Treukhov - he wheezed, gasped out of breath, croaked. His
throat hisse so, as if water was escaping into hot sand.
He also had to be undressed before as finishing off. Solomin spat
and turned away as he undressed him out pants with red lamps.
- Ugh! why you don’t to die as all peopls, the
bastarden, why you did crap into clothes.
And The Guardsman, undressed, stood in a pose, put his hands on his chest and
declared proudly:
- I won’t back spin in front of any scum. Red basterds,
shoot The Russian Officer in the chest.
And spat in Khudonogov’s eyes.
Khudonogov, in a rage, thrust the long barrel of Mauser into the officer’s
lips and breaking down the white plate of his clenched teeth, fired.
The officer helplessly jerked his head and wave arms and fell
backwards. In convulsions, the body began to play with the marble
muscles of the athlete. For one minute Srubov felt sorry for the
handsome man. One day he such felt sorry for a powerful stallion welking
in the street with a broken leg. Khudonogov wiped the spit off his face
with his sleeve. Srubov sternly:
- Do not be nervous.
Both imperiously and irritably:
- The nextig five. To swift . Do not starting a drooling.
Of next the fiving only two women and warrant officer Skachkov remained.
He so and no cut his own throat. And already naked, he still held a
small shard of glass in his hands.
A full-breasted, lop-bottomed lady with a high hairstyle was trembling and did
not want to go to the “wall.” Solomin took her arm:
- Don't be afraid, my dear. Don't be afraid, my
beauty. We're not will doing anything bad to you.
Look, here's another woman.
The naked woman gave in to the persualion clothed man, and with
trembled her well-groomed legs, she to walked on the warm sticky mucus of the
floor. Solomin, with a concerned face carefully convoing acompanied
her to 'wall'.
The other is tall blonde, covered herself down to her knees with her loose
hair wich eyes are blue, wich eyebrows are thick and dark, to say in a very
childish voice and stuttered a little:
- If only you kn-knew, c-comrades as I want to live. Comrades as I wanting to
live...
And from eyes pouring such deep of blue on everyone, so what The security
officers do not can raise their revolvers. The security officers eyes -
coals and from the heart to the feet there is an aching, sweet
languor. The commandant was silent. Five men stood motionless with
cocked revolvers. Them eyes are fixed on she, and became quiet such what
could be heard as perspiration dripper from the ceiling and crashed on the
floor with soft .
The smell of blood and fresh meat awakened the animal and earthy spirit in
Srubov. He wanted grab, squeeze this blue-eyed one, dig into her
area with your claws and teeth, to choke in a salty red stupor... But
the One he loved, whom he promised, was here, and how He could the 'the
Social Revolution' it's the High Social Nonsense, how could the wanted Absurd
Idea did haved comparing with this blue-eyed one gerl? This is
unthinkable, absurd.
And therefore - decisively two steps forward, Black Browning out of
pocket and right between the dark arches of the eyebrows, into the white
forehead, a nickel-plated bullet. The young woman sank with whole body
stretched out on the floor. Bloody corals swirled like a snakes on she
forehead and on brown hair.
Then Srubov do not lowering ar hand and do shoot to temple of the stunned
ensign Skachkov, who is stunned by what is happening. A
full-breasted lady faints nearby, unconscious, hi do bent over her and, with a
point-blank bullet, tore off the lid of she skull with the lush hairstyle.
Browning into pocket, and two stepp back. At the dark end of the
basement, corpses were climbing on top of each other towards the
ceiling. The blood did flows from them to the bright end in streams and
tired Srubov saw the red river. In the intoxicating fog everything
turned red. Everything except corpses. Those are white.
And there are red lamps on the ceiling. Chekists in all red. And
in their hands they do have not revolvers - axes. And
not Corpses fall at floor - white birchs. Elastic bodys of the
white birchs. Life stubbornly resists in them. They chop them down
- they bend, crack, and when they fall, they crunch with a groan and their
dying branches tremble on the ground.
Red Security Officers throw white logs into the red river, make from them
rafts at the red river, and they themselves chop and chop. Fiery sparks
from they impacts.
The red river gnaws at the brick banks with bloody teeth of foam.
Rafts from white birch trunks float in a lines. Each of five logs.
On each one has five security officers, and he Srubov jumps from raft to raft,
gives orders, commands.
And after, when at night, exhausted red insomnia, with red, inflamed eyes, the
river began to tremble of the pre-dawn trembls, and its bloody waves lit up
with a dazzling light the red blood of the white birches flared as sparkling
fiery and it wasn’t the floor that was shaking with fever - it was the volcano
that was erupting and rumbled.
- Trrr-ah-rrr-uh-rrr.
The walls of the basement washed away and destroyed. The courtyard,
streets, and city are flooded, the burning lava flows and flows, and
Srubov was thrown to an unattainable height by the waves of fire. The
bright, shining space blinds him eyes. But there is no fear or
hesitation in the heart. Srubov the stands firmly, with his head
raised, in the thunder of the earthquake, eagerly peering into the
distance.
And There is only one thought in my head - about Her, The Idea of
social public redistribution of income, privileges, resources, property.
II
The moon was feverish. Both from this fever and from the frost the moon
trembled with smal. And her breath was a tremblin of transparent
sparkling haze around her. Above the ground it thickened with clouds of
dirty cotton wool and on the ground it smoked with fresh milk. In the
courtyard, chilly blue snowdrifts huddled in rows in the milk of fog. In
the blue snow, sticking in rags to the window sills, hanging in rags from the
roofs, the frozen white three-story, many-eyed walls turned blue homes.
And in this pale fever, the silhouettes of two people in dark ellou sheepskin
coats, standing on a truck, descending into the black throat of the basement
of a loop of ropes and waiting with bent backs, with arms outstretched
forward.
The basement exhales, coughs:
- To pull-o-u-t-i-i.
And pull on ropes pull the corpses, exhaled or spat out from a steaming
throat with viscous, bloody blue-yellow, warm saliva of basement and did
walking on them, did trampling on them smearing the truck body with
viscous bloody saliva of fikalies.
When the hunched backs of the corpses, freezing and turning blue like
snowdrifts, became higher than the sides, then they were covered with a
tarpaulin as gray as fog and trampled underfoot, getting bogged down and
breaking their backs. In this crunch of bones, in the clang
of iron, in the snorting breath of the engine, in the bloody-black sweat of
oil and blood, the truck went through the gates to the cemetery, shaking the
streets, houses and waked up, geted out from the beds all-knowing
ordinary habitants.
Did wakeds up habitans did pressed their sleepy noses against the frozen glass
and in the trembling of knees, in the trembling of beds, in the clanking of
dishes and windows, them sleepy, festering eyes opened with fear and sleepy,
stinking mouths whispered in powerlessmalice:
- Cheka... From Cheka... Cheka its goods gating outing...
And at the yard, too, the very tired were breaking the blue humps of
snowdrifts with a crunch - Srubov, Solomin, Mudynya, Bozhe, Nepomnyashchikh,
Khudonogov, the commandant, two with shovels and the guards, who there was no
one left convoyng. Solomin walked with Srubov next to
him. The rest are behind. Solomin has blood on the
right sleeve of his overcoat, on the right side of his chest, on his right
cheek like soot. He spoke in a fallen, but cheerful voice,
speaking as people say who have received satisfaction from great, difficult,
but important and useful work.
- If that tall, handsome one, whose we was shoting into mouth ,
but mated with the blue-eyed gerl, it would yield good fruit.
Srubov looked at him. Solomin spoke calmly and waved his hands in a
businesslike manner. Srubov thought: “Who is he talking about?”
But I realized it about was shoted people. With tired eyes he only
that the security officer had a bunch of crosses, icons, and amulets on his
left hand. He asked mechanically:
- Why do you need them, Efim?
Solomin smiled brightly:
- This to for my kids for play, Comrade Srubov. Toys are not on sale
now, there is nothing in stores for children.
And here Srubov remembered that and he haved a son, Yurgis, Yustasik,
Yukhasik.
From behind, were swearing with laughter, and they was remembered those who
were shot.
- The priest signed... And the general... Srubov yawned tiredly, turned
around.
- It's always easier to killing shot the cheerful ones, like man
in pensne, than those who howl...
This is Naum Nepomnyashchikh. Bozhe agree wich him and don’t.
They spoke with sportness, with their heads raised. Srubov was
understanding that all this was feigned and ostentatious. Everyone is
dead tired. and their heads were raised, because they seemed to be made
of lead, and did not keep up straight. And swearing just to cheer myself
up. The word came to mind - doping.
Srubov to get to his office a very long time . Locked himself in
the office room. He turned the key and looked carefully at the door
handle - clean, not dirty. Looked at the hands near the lamp - there was
no blood. He sat down in the chair and immediately jumped up, bent over
the seat - it was also clean. And there was on eit his of sheepskin coat
and his hat also no blood.
He opened the fireproof cabinet, pulled out a quarter of the alcohol from
behind the papers, poured exactly half glass. Alcohol he did diluted with
boiled water from a carafe and shake the cloudy liquid in front of the
fire. Looked tensely through the glass - there was nothing
red. The liquid gradually became transparent.
He brought the glass to his mouth and again in his rememory this word -
doping. Only when he drank and walked around the office did he notice
that from the door to the table, from the table to the closet and back to the
door, went in a red dotted line, closing into an acute triangle, this
was his footprints.
And now one moment bronze trinkets began to stare impudently on hi from
the desk , the steel sofa disdainfully raised its thin bent legs and Karl Marx
from portrete from the wall, defiantly to did showing him his white shirt .
Srubov saw it and got angry.
- White shirts, Comrade Marx, damn you. Angrily, with pain, he grabbed a
quarter bottle of alcohol, glass and walked heavily to the sofa.
'Look at him, aristocrat. Here to you .'-
he purpose didn't take off his boots. Stretched and boot heels
into the armrest. There is dirt, blood and snow sputum on the ash blue
upholstery. Quarter, he to did puted on the floor and the glass next to
it. And own myself want to into the river, into the sea, head, and
that’s it, wash it all away. Already lying down, he to half glass of
hot, undiluted spirit was put into mouth. And in the brain, drunk from
alcohol, from the basement stupor, from fatigue, from insomnia, almost madhen,
almost incoherent thoughts:
- And why, exactly, Marx’s white shirt?
Some of them, of these aristocratic intellectuals - more moderate and liberal
- wanted to give Her an abortion, others - more reactionary and more decisive
- a caesarean section, the most active, the most radical attempted to murder
Her. Her 'The Social Ideology Marxism' and her child - the
justification for the domination of the defective over the more
developed and progressive - Ideology. And wasn’t that what they
did in France, where she, a woman, great, healthy, blooming, was dressed in
velvet, in diamonds, in gold and turned into an insignificant, barren,
weak-willed kept woman of evolution.
His agitated brain painted him pictures of disjointed memories, reality and
fictional subreality: a small office in which there is little air and a lot of
tobacco smoke, vodka fumes, stinking human sweat, in which the desk is covered
in papers - clean and written on, in bottles - empty and unopened with
alcohol, with vodka, whips - belt, rubber, wire, rubber-wire-lead, in
revolvers, in bebuts, in checkers, in grenades.
Whips, revolvers, grenades, rifles, bebutes on the walls and on the floor, on
people sitting at the table and sleeping under it and around it. During
the interrogation, the whole room, drunk or hungover, attacks the interrogated
person with belts, with rubber, with wire, with lead, with iron, with empty
bottles, tears his body to shreds, flogs him bloody, roars and pokes
with dozens of fingers and barrels of rifles with threats.
What is the All-Soviet Extraordinary Commission - this is another
office. This office has a desk covered in green cloth and neatly
folded papers. Srubov imagined himself either in the guise of a
captain or in the guise of a colonel at this table, scented with expensive
perfume, always polite, always delicately, puting out the cigarette butts into
the physiognomy of those being interrogated and signing death warrants.
Well, here you have Marx’s white shirt, this sofa, the prim cleanliness of the
trinkets on the table.
Well, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes... Yes... Yes... Yes... But... But and but...
A bullet it sweet - in the forehead of the beast. But to crush the
worm, who not fit into the understanding of the fictitious activity, the
wretched, bestial understanding of Soviet activists from the depths of the
masses ? to crush the worm who understanding which contradicts the goals of
socialist activity, take under the complete and global control of the
consciousness of the masses and manipulated by them to promote the desired
vector of redistribution of rights, privileges, incomes, property?
What is to crush the worm when hundreds of these worms crunch under your feet
and bloody pus them splashes on your boots, on your hands, on your face?
But the Ideology is not an idea, it is the living organism. A
great pregnant woman who is nurturing her ideal of a new social world order
and is to give birth. Yes Yes Yes...
But for the slush intelligentsia, brought up on Roman togas and in Church
robes, she, the ideology of public social reorganization is, of course, a
barren goddess with dead facial features in an ancient or crach
chlamys. Sometimes the slushy aristocracys, she is even
depicted this way on revolutionary banners and posters.
But for Srubov, She is a pregnant woman, Asian wide- arsh bottomed, in a torn,
patched, dirty, lousy canvas shirt. And he loved her as she was,
not fictional, naturional. He loved she for the fact that in Her
veins, a gigantic, like a river, flaming paw, that in Her intestines there is
a healthy rumbling, that Her stomach like a blast furnace, that the beating of
Her heart is like the underground volcano. He loveb her what She, in great
thought, scraping out wich self off ascoroids, worms and other
parasites. into the depths of the sea them with cast-iron cannonballs on
their legs, into ravines with boarded up with earth and twisted arms, into
basements broken skulls... and a archangels will opened their mouths
in surprise !
'And for this reason -Srubov convinced himself - we musted, we must, we must,
we must pressing them, pressing them, crush them. We what tobe need was
just that its bloody fabric was developing on wind, and only that no one was
stopping from idealizing theft, robberys, violences, murders. But
the pus from them, pus, pus. And here is Marx's white shirt
again.'
And from the street, the icy frost sticks to the window and breaks the frame,
and the thermometer, which the merchant Innokenty Pshenitsyn had previously
looked at, drops to minus forty-seven.
It’s a muddy dawn in the office of Innokenty Pshenitsyn, now Srubov. The House
of Innokenty Pshenitsyn, now Gubchek. And the Gubchek does not know, does not
notice dawns, dusks, nights, days - it clatters with typewriters, rustles
paper, shuffles with dozens of feet, slams doors, does not sleep around the
o'clocks.
And in cellars No. 3, 2, 1, where Innokenty Pshenitsyn stored heads of cheese,
heads of sugar, sausages, wine, canned food, now it’s different. In No.
3, in the semi-darkness, on the shelves replacing bunks, heads of cheese - the
heads of those arrested, sausages - sausages of arms and legs, and red fat
rats with long bare tails scurry cautiously, stealthily.
If the arrested fell into a light, trembling sleep, the rats with
the sensitive fluttering of their whiskers, nostrils and the sharp shine of
their eyes, explore the air, unmistakably identify those who sleep
soundly, and gnaw their shoes. Such, from the defendant Nevedomskaya
they did eaten her tall, warm galoshes. The good were
hopeless damaged, and, but after her execution they could have been or simple
appropriated or appropriated and sold at a local flea market.
And in basement No. 1, when the corpses have already been removed, these same
rats, squealing, cheep, fighting, lick, gnaw out human blood from the earthen
floor, and their tongues are red, greedy, hot like tongues of fire, and their
teeth are sharp, white, stronger than stone, stronger than
concrete. There is no the rats only in basement No. 2. In basement
No. 2 do not keeping people for a long time, there do not shooting
executions. A defendants are put in basement No. 2 on few hours
before the execution.
And in the damp fog of frost, in the haze of dawn, on a white three-story
building there is a signl in blood red spots and it says in red on and black :
'Extraordinary Commission of province of Lithuania.' Below in
parentheses it is more concise and clearer (Gubchek). And earlier,
in gold on black: 'Wine. Gastronomy. Groceries. Innokenty Pshenitsyn.'
Above the house, a velvet, heavy, blood-swollen red banner splashes in the
wind with bloody splashes of frayed fringe and tassels. And, shaking the
streets, houses and the cemetery, the last gray truck in the bloody black
sweat of blood and oil is carrying security officers with iron shovels and
when he stomps his heavy steel feet on street,Above the house, a velvet,
heavy, blood-swollen red banner splashes in the wind with bloody splashes of
frayed fringe and tassels. And, shaking the streets, houses and the
cemetery, the last gray truck in the bloody black sweat of blood and oil is
carrying security officers with iron shovels and when he stomps his heavy
steel feet on street, are trembles of stone houses of city and them
habitans.
III
At night, a white stone three-story house with a beautiful flag on the roof,
with a red slangs on the wall, with red stars on the caps of the sentries
peered into the city with hungry shiny quadrangular eyes of the windows. Hi
grinned the frozen teeth of cast-iron lattice gates and grabbed, chewed
armfuls habiten of city, swallowed them with gulps of cellars, digested in the
stone belly and with phlegm, saliva, excrement spat out up into the
street. And by dawn, yawning the creaking of his cast-iron teeth and
jaws, he showed from the gateway out red tongues of blood.
In the mornings, the quadrangular eyes of the windows dimmed and turned
black, the blood of the flag, the singls, the stars on the caps of the
sentries glowed it was getting, the bloody tongues from the gateway licked the
sidewalk, the road, and the legs of trembling passers-by. And the house,
with its obsessive, persistent metal tentacles of wires, probed around the
city houses with colorful signs of Soviet institutions. There were no other
institutions in the city.
- They say from Gubchek of Lithuania. Report immediately... From
Gubchek. Within twenty-four hours, imagine to us... Gubcheka proposes
urgently, on personal responsibility... Today, before the end of jobday, give
Gubcheka explanation... Gubcheka demands...
And so to everyone. And all the houses with colorful signs of
Soviet institutions, large and small, stone and wooden, spread out their black
ears of telephone receivers, listened attentively, and hastily making as
required by the Cheka - immediately, now, at twenty-four before the and
of a job day. This tradition has been preserved to this day
throughout the entire post-Soviet space, where now commercial and public
institutions are the property of former and current Soviet leaders. And today,
even in important public positions, public and officials persons from post
soviet union space in the offices of Strasbourg or the states of the European
Union, they do not change their innation instincts.
And in Gubchek - people armed with rifles stood on every platform, in every
corridor, at every door and in the yard. People in leather jackets, cloth
tunics, service jackets armed with revolvers, sat at tables with papers, ran
around the rooms with briefcases. Young ladies unarmed, beautiful and ugly,
well and poorly dressed did hammer about typewriters. Commissioners,
agents, Red Army soldiers of the Cheka battalion smoked, talked in the smoke
of the commandant's room. Servants from the dining room Cheka carried liquid
tea on a tray to departments in red clay glasses with sweets made of rye
flour and molasses. Visitors in torn fur coats (a visitors always went to
Cheka in rags. Those who didn’t have their own taking them from friends)
timidly took passes and as a witnesses were impatiently waiting for
interrogation, every visitors were afraid turned becase from witnesses into a
accuseds and tobe arrested.
At every morning in Srubov’s office there on his desk is a gray pile of
packages . The envelopes are different - white, yellow, from newsprint,
from old archival files. A addresses wraiting there is and a dashing
clerical handwriting, and with a flourish, and illiterate scribbles, and
nervous intellectual script, and carefully ladies' handwriting and even
squares of typewriter font. Srubov quickly vskryval envelopes:
- It wouldn’t hurt to pay Gubchek’s attention... Dvoezhenstvo.
Undermining the authority of the party... Well-wisher.
- I, as an ideological communist, cannot... this is an outrageous
phenomenon:
some visitors say to the servants - young lady, darling, whereas now is the
Soviet government and need talking 'comrade', and you, as...
It is necessary should know this...
Srubov filled his pipe, sat more comfortably in the chair. A package
with the inscription 'top secret', 'to personal tohands'.
Newsprint. Opened the onvelope.
'I found a foto the 3rd roti commander of the white Galicia...'
Further on, on a white sheet of writing paper, there are discussions about
what Kolchak did in Siberia and what the Soviet government is doing. At
the very end there is a conclusion:
'...and therefore him ( company commander ) need will indirectly destroy him,
he interferes with the work of offending the workers and peasants, and
prohibits Red Army soldiers from wellcome greeting each other
friendly handshake. Political Commissar Pattykin.'
Srubov wrinkle and did chupcked on his pipe.
Other envelope:
In watercolor on ivory paper there is a black grave mound with a stake
stuck into mound. Below is the inscription: “Death to the blood
dreenking security officers...”
He pursed his lips in disgust and threw it into the trash.
Another envelope:
'Comrade Chairman, want to datebathe you, because the security officers are
very attractive. They all wear leather jackets with velvet collars, they
always have revolvers on their sides and they are very brave, and there are
red stars on their chests... I will be waiting for you...'
Srubov laughed and empty out his pipe onto the cloth of the table. He
threw the letter and began to brush away the burning tobacco. There was
a knock on the door. Without waiting for permission, Alexei Bozhe
entered. He put his big red hands on the edge of the table and stared at
Srubov with unblinking red eyes and sked firmly, aske:
- we today tobe shotting ?
Srubov understood, but for some reason he asked again:
- What?
- the exicution to shoting.
- And what?
God's quadrangular, flat, cheekbone-like face twitched with displeasure, his
black fused eyebrows moved, the whites of his eyes turned red.
- You know yourself.
Srubov knew that security officers languish painfully when they do not have
the opportunity to exicution shoot or be present at executions for a long
time. He knew that this profession leaves an indelible mark on every
person, develops special professional (peculiar only to this profession)
character traits, and to a certain extent determines spiritual needs,
inclinations and even physical needs. And Bozhe - an old security
officer, and in the Cheka he was always only an executioner.
- There is no strength to endure, Comrade Srubov. The second week
goes by without any work. I will be drunking, do
whatever you want.
Bozhe, quadrangular, square, with a thick neck and low forehead, he was
marking time and did not take his inflamed red eyes of maniak off Srubov.
And Srubov has a thought about Her. About the idea, ideology of
redistribution of social and material goods. - This She destroys
her enemies. But She is also wounded. After all, this
is Her blood, this Bozhe. And She blood is zombie blood that came
out of wound. She inevitably turns black, turns into a monster and
dies. A person who turns a means into an end loses human dignity
and decays. She, it's essentially insignificant, but great only as
a means of acquiring undeserved social and material benefits with Her, on Her
path. Without Her, outside of Her, all crimes of any regime lose
their meaning and turn into ordinary criminal crimes. And from
Srubov has not pity for Bozhe, no sympathy.
- If you get drunk, I'll throw you to basement.
Without knocking on the door, without permission enter, the swaying gait
Vanka Mudyn entered with and stood at the table next to Bozhe.
- Did called me. I showed up.
But he doesn’t look Srubov in the eyes - he’s offended.
- Are you drinking, Vanka?
- Drinking.
- Will throwin in the basement.
Mudynia’s cheeks flushed as if from a slap in the face. His hands
nervously fiddle at his jacket, and his voice was more painful than
resentment:
- It’s unfair, Comrade Srubov. I, a working person, I been
me since the first day of Soviet power. And you me want are into
the same hole with lousy, smelly intellectuals?
- Do not drink.
Srubov is cold and indifferent. Mudynya blinkef frequently up and curled
his thick lips.
- Even if you put me stended the wall now, I can’t. Shot a thousand
people - nothing, didn’t drink. And just as I killed own brother,
started drinking. As my dreem I loock him. I tell him - get
stended goto wall, my Andryusha, and he - Vansha, brother, and tgeting on
knees... Oh... I dream about it every night...
Srubov is feld not feeld well. Thoughts come in lumps, flaps,
knots, fragments. Confusion. He can't understand
anything. Vanka drinks, robs, rapes. Bozhe drinks,
rapes, kills. He drinks himself. Why can't
they? (Well, yes, the prestige of the Cheka. They make are all
almost open. Yes. Then, in general, does this ideology have the right to
prevent them from satisfying their needs and getting rich? And what does
Ideology know about satisfying simple of instincts of humans ? Ah, She, Idea,
Ideology - Ideal? And the sweat, hostility of moral Chaos.)
- can go. You can’t just openly, need in such a way that
there are no witnesses.
And when the door closed, he buried myself in the letter so as not to think,
not to think, not to think.
'I am a central person, but... especially since he is a responsible worker...
Kerosene is necessary for the Republic. And to exchange half a pound of
potatoes for two pounds of kerosene for personal pleasure...'
And one after another came statements about two pounds of salt, a pound of
bread, half a pound of sugar, ten pounds of flour, three nails, a pair of
soles, a dozen needles, which someone exchanged with someone else, bought
(whereas now the Soviet government of regime allows everything purchase
only on orders with appropriate signatures, sealed, with proper
permission). And if all this was obtained under a warrant, then the
illegality of the issuance of the warrant itself and the incorrectness of its
issuance were indicated.
Three or four practical message - the counter-razor is hiding under someone
else’s family, furs are being systematically stolen from the warehouse of the
Gubernia State Narkhoz, the punisher has infiltrated the party.
And again well-wishers, sighted, seeing, neutral, outsiders,
independent. In the rustle of paper whisper - 'bring it to the
attention of those who should', and all obsequiously lied.
In letters Each of the informers pulling Srubov in his bedroom, showing
chamber pots closet (maybe the man was drunk and, perhaps, maybe the doctor
could be think and establish), dirty laundry in front of him shook their own,
their family’s, relatives, quaintance's and other's peopl's. Like
mice, informers penetrate into other people's cellars, undergrounds, closets,
climbed in garbage dumps, and all the time they smiled ingratiatingly or made
faces the noble guardians of morality and everyone nodded their heads
and asked:
- What do you think this is ? How is it ? A
? Nothing ? Doesn’t it smack of monarchy,
counter-revolution, sabotage, dissent ? How about taking here
? Does this correspond to the revolutionary socialist
understanding ? Does this where to gets suspicious?
No? A?
But for practick the majority of informants will refused to officially confirm
their testimony in the Cheka office, calmly stepped aside and
indifferently telke that this did not concern them, that their moral
duty was only to transfer this to the proper punitive authority.
Srubov in red pencil put resolutions in a denunciations from now persons of
soviet civil belonging habiten and did signed his name with the
two letters A.S.. He read impatiently, quickly, through a lins. Mostly
only anonymous letters and empty statements from voluntary informants came to
him. Serious information, reports from secret agents, went
directly to the intelligence department of the Cheka, Comrade Arsh Dichev.
Srubov did not finish reading the denunciations. Tired up. Got up
and get the office with long steps from corner to corner. The pipe went
out, and he chewed on it and pulled. The sticky mud irritated him
body. Srubov shrugged his shoulders. He unbuttoned the collar of
his uniform. The undershirt is completely clean. He just put on
yesterday after a bath. Everything is clean and the itselfone is
clean. But the feeling of dirt did not go away.
An expensive desk with a luxurious marble writing set. Comfortable
rich armchairs. Cloth embroidered wallpaper on the
walls. Cold, sparkling, swaggering purity. And Srubov
feels awkward in his office.
He went to the window. Lot persons did walked along and drove the
street. Busy Soviet workers walked with briefcases, housewives with
baskets, various Soviet a slaves with and without bags. Only
people with briefcases and people with red stars on their caps and sleeves
were driving, and Soviet animal-like people were trudging between the
sidewalks with loaded sleds.
And this whole moving street is hundreds of sensitive nerve-wires to his
office. He has a lot of voluntary informants, a staff of permanent
secret agents, and together with each of them he spies, eavesdrops, cheats,
robs, steals and kills. He is constantly aware of other people's
thoughts, intentions, and actions. He has many common interests
with all diaporas, clans of Soviet speculators, bandits, corrupt officials and
socialists. And where his people do mischief, cause dirt, he is
obliged to lend a helping hand and contribute information, clean up, remove
witnesses, and also authoriness and populariness persons not loyal to the
Soviet regime.
In his brain, a foreign word emerged letter by letter and stretched into a
banner of slang ( similar words have been running through his head all the
time lately ): The A-s-s-e-n-i-z-a-t-o-r.
Srubov grinned - The Assenizator of the revolution. Of course, he
had almost no dealings with people, only with scum. They do
neglect the revaluation of value. What was valuable before, before
the revolutionary socialist takeover, has now become absolutely unnecessary
and had no value. Where the rabid people attached to the camp
Soviet regime worked, he had nothing to do. His attention is to
catch in the bloody muddy river of revolution rubbish, disloyal, doubting
scum, a reality of contryng ng to the common sense of miserable, everything
that is above revolutionary understanding and thereby prevent pollution sovieh
habitans, poisoning of pure subsoil springs of 'the Soviet ideology' as
metod socialnogo raspredeleniya dohodov, blag, privilege. And the
long word 'The Assenizator' remained in He head.
...Mudynya, Bozhe - both are seasoned front-line soldiers, faithful, true
comrades. At both has the Order of the Red Banner. Ivan
Nikitich Smirnov knew them the from the eastern front and it was about them
that he said: 'With such people we will win...!'
But vodka? And you? And what significance
do we all have - me, Mudynya, God, well, everyone and everything... Yes, what
significance does our personal, all of have for the Idea, justified by
Idealistic Ideals?
And this is a letter from him father, received two days ago. Of
course, father’s maybe thoughts are not his own... 'Imagine that you yourself
are erecting the building of your destiny with the goal of making people
happy, building on their misfortunes your own and your comrades’ well-being
and thereby giving them peace and tranquility, turning them into dumb,
thoughtless slaves organized crime group? and if for this it
is necessary to torture just one sane tiny creation and to found this building
on his pain, torment, and tears, do you think this is progress? I,
your father, answer - no, never... You think to erect the building of a prison
of human destinies on the millions of tortured, executed people... You are
mistaken... They will abandon own the future for you, and your children and
your grandchildren, and you lose everything that is of this blood will
be created...'
Srubov did not notice how the impatient Arsh Dichev approached the table and
sat down. Arsh coughed impatiently, Srubov
shuddered. He sat down in a chair and mechanically invited
Arsh to sit down. He listened and did not hear what Arsh was
saying, and looked at him with empty, absent eyes.
When Arsh said what was needed, got up, and was about to leave, Srubov
asked:
- Do you ever, Comrade Arsh, think about the unascking of
terror? Have you ever felt sorry for those who were shot, or
rather, those being dod shotd? like their childrens, relatives, loved ones?
Arsh in a black leather franchise, in black leather trousers, in a black wide
hoop belt, in black high polished boots, shaved, neatly combed, looked at
Srubov with stubborn, cold blue eyes. And his Jewish nose with a
hump, his sharp quadrangular chin upward. The fist of the left
hand is in the pocket like a cobblestone, the wide palm of the right is on the
holster of the revolver.
- I am a worker, you are an intellegent. I have hatred, you
have ideology.
He didn't say anything more. Didn't like abstract
conversations. Grew up he in a family of alcoholics, practically
in a factory. Hardly saw my parents - my mother is a prostitute, my
father is a joker and drunk. For ten years, the belts hissed
like snakes above him head, he gritted my teeth, heard clicking of the
cogwheels of life. No time to talk. Need hurry up
around living. Became stingy with words, but thought quickly,
without going into details and the consequences of his own conclusions,
decisions, actions, behavior - a piece of hardware, a machine. He
left the factory in search of a cheerful life for the war, and from the war he
fled into the revolution, or rather into the service of Her, the idea of
redistribution of material and social benefits. But in his soul
remained embittered at everyone and everything that was beyond his ability to
understand - an irresponsible, illiterate, ambitious alcoholic imposing his
opinion. To him and during the service in the office, one could hear the
hissing whistle of belts and the clicking of the cogwheels of
life. In the office, at the table as if at lot machine. Wrote
without worrying about the meaning, the content of what was written directly
contradicting one another, but he wrote quickly and a lot. Paper
fliwer in shavings from his desk onto the typist's desk. Was phone rang
and he grabbed the receiver. One ear listens, the other controls
the sound of the print machine. Interruption, stop - shouts:
- Jobeng... Jobeng... swift !
And he shouts into the phone:
- Karosho. I'm listening.
On the move, orders to the agents, on the move, two or three words
sluzhashim. Quickly, quickly. There is no time to sit, no time to
think, the plant of death is in ful work. And this business getting good.
And so, comout offis Srubov, in the corridor he grabbed one of the witnesses
with his eyes like pincers, sat him in a chair and crushed him with a vice
questions like hammers.
- What? Reliability?
Karosho. Do you sympathize with the Soviet
regime? Fully? Karosho.
But let's be logical to the end...
And Arsh Dichev wrote on paper what he didn’t want to say when oficial
reception:
'Whoever sympathizes with the government should help give it. Will you be our
secret informant?'
The witness is stunned, hi muttering half refusal and half
agreement. And Dichev is already putting him on the list and hands
him a typewritten instruction sheet for secret informants.
- Do you agree? Karosho. Read it. We will
giving you status of trustworthiness.
Of course, he doesn’t trust him, like dozens of other employees.
The task of each Cheka agent is to provide and sign the information that is
expected of him. Reality he was not interested.
Into Srubov’s office with snooping, clinging steps, bowing, crouching, smiling
crawled ex colonel Krutaevas. A flabby, gray-haired, bald man, in a
shabby officer's overcoat, sat down on one to side dofferently place
Srubov.
- I wrote to you from prison, Comrade Srubov, about my long-standing
sympathies for the Soviet regime.
The ex colonel casually to leg on leg.
- I argued and maintain that in my person you are acquiring a most valuable
collaborator and a most devoted ideological communist.
Srubov wanted to spit in Krutaevas’s face, slap him, and trample him. He
restrained himself, chewed his mustache, and put his beard in his mouth.
He was silent and listened.
Krutaevas stretched his flabby lips with a sweet smile and pulled out a silver
cigarette case from his pocket.
- Will you allow ? And you ?
The excolonel stood up and, with his cigarette case open, reached across the
table. Srubov refused.
- Today I will prove this to you, ideological comrade Srubov and the most
insightful my dear Gubchek.
Srubov was silent. Twisting his hand into the side pocket of his
overcoat.
- how do you like well done ?
He gave to Srubov business card of photographic. Puffy, interesting
face, captain's shoulder straps. Orden Vladimir with swords and a
bow.
- And ?
- My wife's brother.
Srubov shrugged.
- And what's the matter?
- And his last name is my dear comrade Srubov.
- Who is he?
- Klimenko. Captain Klimenko is the exhead of the Police Investigation
Department. Srubov did not let he finish.
- Klimenko?
Krutaevas is pleased. The senile, fading eyes inplayng oily with a sly
smile.
- You see, how mne tyazhelo, one might say, I don’t spare for your Cheka my
own brother. Srubov wrote down Klimenko’s detailed address. The
surname under which he was hiding.
As Krutaevas left, he casually said:
- Yes, dear comrade Srubov, give me two hundred rubles.
- For what?
- To compensate morally and materially for the costs of purchasing the
business card of photographic.
- After all, you tooking it the from your home.
- No from friends. Ya vam rodnogo brata prodal!
- So, did you buy the business card of photographia of Klimenko from your
friends?
Krutaevas incoughed. He coughed for a long time. Blue veins bulged
on his forehead, his thick forehead turned purple, and the eyes became watery
and red. Srubov hand has his on a marble paperweight. In the head
- raise, swing and hit the excolonel in the temple.
Finally Krytaevas cleared throat.
- For mercy, comrade Srubov, I bought it from the servants. Exactly two
hundred rubles.
Srubov threw two hundred-ruble notes onto the table. Krutyaev took
the money and offered his hand for a handshake. Srubov pointed at
the wall with his eyes: “HANDSHAKES CANCELED.” Krutaevas again
with the sly of oily smile, shuffled in a low bow and with his worn out
galoshes, shuffled towards the door. And Srubov still wanted to throw
the paperweight at his hunched back.
Through the open door to Srubov's office, the noise of conversation and
stomping could be heard from the corridor - the security officers were going
to the dining room for dinner, and in the evening there was a committee
meeting.Mudynya and God, half-drunk and smiling senselessly. Solomin, who had
just returned from the search, rubbe his nose and listened carefully.
Arsh Dichev sat with the usual mask of gray indifference on his face - every
day, cunning, deceiving and afraid of being deceived, he learned to take away
from their faces the slightest reflection of his experiences and
thoughts. Srubov smoked his pipe and was
bored. The speaker, a political instructor of the
Cheka battalion, a beardless guy, spoke about the program for Red Army's
on the housing issue. The Cheka was the structure in the department of the Red
Workers' Peasant Army.
Nearby in the other room, non-party Red Workers' Peasant Army soldiers from
the Cheka battalion played checkers, rustled newspapers, and smoked. The
social and other privileges at non-party not distrebiuted . Gubchek's
translator Wanda Klembrowskene play interpretation in the piano
lento ma non troppo sonata No 2 'The Airplane'. The Red Army soldiers listen
and shake their heads.
- You won’t understand what he’s strumming.
The sounds of piano sound like raindrops about the wall, the
ceiling, and muffled drops about the stairs. It seems to Srubov that it
is raining. The rain breaks through the roof, the ceiling, and hits the
floor with thousands of splashes. He remembered Levitan, Chekhov,
Dostoevsky. And He was surprised: why? And, already leaving the
meeting, He realized: Klembrovskaya was playing variation 'The Airplane'.
IV
Her hands hid her trembling in the thin folds of her dress. Half-lowered
eyelashes covered the restless shine of the eyes. But Virga could not
hide her heavy breathing and her face in the cold powder of fear. And
there are suitcases open on the floor. On the bed there is ironed linen
in rectangular piles. The chest of drawers gaped empty drawers and them
locks in them did bare flat teeth.
- Andrey, these nights when you come home pale, with the smell of alcohol and
there is blood on your dress... No, it’s terrible.
Am so I can’t Virga couldn’t cope with her excitement. The voice was
breaking. Srubov pointed to the sleeping child:
- Quiet you.
She sat on the windowsill, with his back to the light. The black shadow
of a shaggy head and angular shoulders was smeared on the scarlet gold of the
glass.
- Andryusha... You did be once so close and understandable... And now you’s
always closed in on himself, always in a mask... Alien... Andryusha.
She to made a movement towards her husband, clumsily, she sank sideways
onto the bed, white pile of laundry drop to the floor. She lowered her
head into her hands.
- No I can not. Ever since you began serving in this terrible
institution, I have been afraiding of you...
Andrey did not respond.
- You have enormous, literally unlimited power, and you... I’m ashamed that
I’m you wife...
She didn't finish. Andrey quickly pulled out a silver cigarette case,
hit the lid of the cigarette with the mouthpiece to case cigarette case
and, lit.
- Well, finish the.
In the old wall clock, after each stroke of the pendulum, wheezed the spring,
as if someone was walking along a wooden sidewalk, dragging a sore leg. Little
Yurgis was snoring on his high bed. Virga was silent. The glass in the windows
became prosaically gray with a yellow coating.
The chest of drawers, beds, suitcases and baskets are become dark
tumors. Soft drapes of shadows hung in the corners, the room lost
the definiteness of its lines, and became vaguely darck round.
Andrey saw only the red fire of point of his cigarette. Another
similar one poked into his heart, and his burned heart ached.
- Are you silent? Well, I'll say it this way.
You are ashamed that various philistine bastards consider your husband a
murderer. Yes? Is this the reason?
Virga shuddered. She raised her head. She saw the
sharp fire of the cigarette's red eye, and she turned away.
Andrey, without putting it out, threw away the cigarette butt and was stabbed
with a small fire pin from the floor in hurt. It hurt, as just like in
Andrey’s heart. Virga covered her face with her hands.
- Not just ordinary people... and some of comraden communists...
And she said with despair, with effort, barely audible, the last argument:
- And I’m tired of sitting on the same ration with Yurka.
Others know how do , but you not...
Andrey crushed the cigarette with a heavy boot. He was indignant.
He wanted to say something rude to her, he wanted to humiliate her, to spit on
her. At she who so simply spat on him and humiliated him.
Srubov was painfully ashamed that he was married to some narrow-minded, stupid
bourgeois woman, a complete stranger and dangerous to him.
He flicked the switch. Suitcases, heap of things, randomly dumped
in one pile, disappeared just as and she disappeared. Because
strangers. He began to remember my first meeting with Virga.
What drew him to this weak, ugly, stupid woman?
Yes, yes, she humiliated him, insulted him closeness, because she did pretend
to be at all. She skillfully captured his thoughts and desires,
skillfully voiced them, passing them off as her own. But is't only because he
liv with this woman what that her beliefs, her thoughts are identical to the
beliefs and thoughts of the he ? But not because he lived with this woman,
what she to did said, what he wanted ? Fifth year together.
Some kind of absurdity. After all, there was something else that
drew him to her? And this something is still there now, when she has already
decided to finally leave him. What was this ? Srubov could not explain to
himself.
- So you are leaving forever?
- Forever, Andrey.
And even in the voice, in the first persons - firmness. I've never
noticed her before.
- Well, this your the will. The world is big.
You met a man, and I will meet a partner...
And hurt in heart. Why does it hurt? Because he
feels something towards Virga? Son. Son it together. Dear to
both. And this another insult. Murderer.
Not a word is a scourge. It hurts unbearably,
searingly. There is a scar on the soul. Revolution,
party membership obliges - a common cause with comrades. Yes, now
is not the time to show off your loot. A communist should be proud
that he has fulfilled his duty to the party, to like-minded
comrades. Yes. But the word, the word. He
wish could hide somewhere under the bed, in the wardrobe. Let no
one will see he. No one.
V
Srubov saw every day the consequences of the violent redistribution of rights,
privileges, income, property of the so-called proletarian revolution and every
day in rags of two colors - red and gray. And Srubov thought why, in the false
pathos of bourgeois, proletariats resolutions, the revolution is always red
and in red. No, the color red alone cannot characterize a revolution. The fire
of uprisings, the sacrifice of blood, the call to fight - the color red.
Terror, hunger, poverty, robbery, takeover of property, kidnapping, violence,
murder, fraud and, ultimately, totalitarian dependence on a criminal terrorist
group that has usurped all branches of legislative power and law - is gray.
She is red and gray. And this Red Banner is a mistake, inaccuracy, lack of
agreement, self-delusion, the desire to pass off emotional Euphoria as
reality. You need to add gray to red. Or maybe banner flag of revoliution
should be made gray, with a red star on a gray background. Yes, and the red
star - as the symbol of the dictatorship of job people and irresponsibility,
impunity, permissiveness of their leaders ! There is no need to deceive anyone
or create an illusion. Fewer illusions mean fewer mistakes and
disappointments. More sober, targer look.
And also thought:
- Isn’t this red name sullied, not worn out, just as the understanding of the
very word of a Social Democratia is worn out, sullied?
Here doesn’t the redistribution of benefits, privileges, income, takeover of
other people’s merits on various belonging grounds, including social ones. And
demokratiya po kakim libo priznakam prinadlezhnosti not contradict the
declared goals of the revolution? Didn’t the executioners, the saboteurs of
the proletariat and of proletariat liders, raise him up and did hide behind
him in the Tauride and Winter Palaces, and in the buildings of the Samara
Komuch? Wasn’t it wich him that Kolchak’s division fought? And Heideman,
Vanderwalde, Kerensky...
Srubov was a fighter, a man with big wolf black eyes. And wolf eyes need a red
and a gray, they need blood and light, otherwise they will become sad and dim.
Srubov has red, gray, gray, red, red-gray every day. Isn’t it gray and red -
searches with the disturbed mothball comfort of the chests, the frightened
silence of other people’s apartments and expropriations, confiscations,
arrests and frightened distorted faces, dirty lines of arrested people, tears,
requests, executions with split skulls and steaming heaps of brains, blood.
That’s why Srubov went to the cinema, loved ballet and sat in the theater on
every tour of a new ballerina.
But the theater is not only an orchestra, a ramp, a stage. Theater is also and
audience. And and when the histrionics hasn't started yet or when the
orchestra was late and stage was by is still closed, then the audience had
nothing to do and eti - hundreds of eyes, dozens of binoculars, lorgnettes
looked at Srubov. Wherever Srubov turns, there are shiny circles of glass and
eyes, eyes, eyes. From binoculiars, from lorgnettes, from the eyes - rays.
Their focus is Srubov. And along the stalls, along the boxes, along the
gallery, whisper:
- Pre-Gubchek - ruining persons... Owner of the provincial basement...
Gubernatorial executioner... Red gendarme... Soviet chasteiner... The first
robber...
Srubov is nervous, turns pale, spins around in his chair, pushes his beard
into his mouth, chews his mustache. His eyes darken and fill with anger. Free
Soviet art, free Soviet propaganda for free Soviet employees. Worn jackets
with torn shoulder straps. Former ladies in patched dresses and dirty,
wrinkled boas. They whisper, bulge their eyes, shy away from he as if from the
plague. Vile little souls:
And donst you write denunciations against each other? And are not writing you
for us about your most devoted devotion to the Cheka and Party ? - Reptiles.
There are and communists among you who have infiltrated the party, so-called
socialists. Many of you sang and sing with enthusiastic cries - 'merciless
revenge on all opponents. Vengeance and death... We are the right, we are the
number.
We who were nothing, be everything. We did beated, we destroy them and will
damned the villains.'
Now you bastards, stay away from the security officers. Security officers are
second class. You are scoundrels, hypocrites, vile white-handed people, in the
newspapers, you are not against terror, you realize the need for his book, you
despise the security officer who carries out the tendency you recognize to
translate what you want into reality. You say - the enemy of disarmad. No, he
is still alive - he is not disarmed. His main weapon is his head, and you,
unfortunately, are incredibly stupid and therefore turn into enemies, tirans
yourself. 'He who lives at the expense of others person, from evil for drugih
ljudei est criminal. This is an eternal slogan.
It's you who imagine yourself as new masters to replace the old ones and
surround terrorists and socialist-revolutionaries with an aura of heroism.
Aren't Sazonov, Kalshev, Balmashev the such executioners? Of course, they did
it against the backdrop of beautiful scenery with pathos, in emotional
outburst, and for us this is an everyday matter, work. But when it is
systematic, without pathos and witout euphoria, transparently, meaningfully,
this is what you all are most afraid of. We are doing a huge amount of dirty
work and you need hysteria and pathos. You don't like menial laborers. You
like cleanliness everywhere and in all environments, right down to the toilet,
but from the sewer cleaner cleaning it turn away with contempt. You all like
steaks, but butcher is a dirty word for you. But after all, all of you, from
the Black Hundreds to the socialist, justify the existence of a violent
redistribution of income, property, rights, privileges through execution, and
shun the executioner, always portraying him as the bestial Malyuta. You always
speak with disgust about persones that embodies your own driams, desires. But
I'm telling you bastards and that we have a right to respect...'
Srubov did not wait until the start of the performance, he jumped up and went
to the exit. Eyes, binoculares, lorgnettes from the sides, in the back, in the
face. He didn’t notice what said loudly, 'Bastards', and spat.
He in homecame pale, with a twitching face. An old woman in a black dress and
scarf, who opened the door, looked inquisitively and tenderly into he eyes:
- You sick, Andryusha?
Srubov's shoulders slump powerlessly. He looked at his mother with a heavily
exhausted gaze, dull, melancholy eyes.
- I'm tired, mom.
Srubov down did on the bed right away. Mother rattled the tableware, she was
packing dinner. But Srubov only wanted to sleep.
Srubov sees a huge machine in the dream. There are a lot of people at the
machine of mashine The main this leaders, cult persons they are machinists,
are all in command positions, at the top, moving the levers, turning the
steering wheel, looking into the distance. Sometimes they lean over the
railing, wave their arms, shout something to working below and everything
shout forward, forward. The lower ones load fuel, pump water, run around with
oil of cans, every they are all skinny and black with soot and dirt. And at
the very bottom, near the wheels of the car, shiny disk-knives are spinning
and huge iron hands are raking up the nutrient mixture they have crushed,
spitting out excrement and other abomination through the anus. At them are
Srubov's colleagues - security officers.
Srubov looks closely - disks are rotating in the bloody mass, and this mass is
worms. The whole field is soft red worms. The knives cut and cut them. The raw
red dough is raked up by the iron hands of the mechanism, and the excrement
threatens to clog the machine, poison person serving and the leaders. they are
separated from the general nutrient mass and spat out through the anus and
trampled into the ground by wheels. The security officers do not move away
from the knives and the conveyor. It smells like meat around them. The only
thing Srubov cannot understand is why smells not raw meat, but fried.
And suddenly the worms turned into cows. And their heads human. Cows with
human heads, like worms, crawl and crawl. The automatic disk-knives can't keep
up with the job. The Chekists manually poke them in the back of the head with
knives and this red dough falls inunder the machine.
One cow has blue-blue eyes. Her tail is a golden braid. She crawls to over
Srubov. Srubov stab her between the eyes. The knife is stuck. The wound smells
of blood and fried meat right and the smell right in his face. Srubov feels
stuffy. He is suffocating.
Srubov opened his eyes. On the table near the bed was a plate with two
cutlets. Next to it was a fork, a piece of bread and a glass of milk. His
mother tried but failed to wake him. Srubov shouted:
- Mom, mom, why are you did put meat me?
The old woman is sleep, she couldn't hear.
- Mom!
Opposite the bed is a dressing table and in it is reflected the pale face of
Srubov with a sharp nose, frightened eyes, disheveled hair and such as
desheveling goatee beard. Srubov is scared. This double keeps on eye to him
and repeats all his movements, and Srubov like a child, calls:
- Mom, mom.
Mama is asleep, you can't hear her. Shuffles sore leg the pendulum's and
wheezed the clock. Srubov is cold, he freezes to the bed. The double has a
crazy look, he alert, he on the lookout. Srubov wants to call his mother
again, but he can't move his tongue, he has no voice. And only the that other
one, imitating him in the mirror, silently moves his lips.
VI
Srubov's comrade from the gymnasium, university and the party underground,
Isaac Katz, a member of the Gubchek Board, signed the death warrant for
Srubov's father, doctor of medicine Petras Jonavich Srubov, the same Petras
Jonavich, the black-bearded Moscow doctor in gold glasses who jokingly tousled
the red hair of from Vilnius high school student Dichev and called him
Arshljuka, and whom Arsh called Petras Jonavich.
And before the execution, undressing in the damp stuffiness of the basement,
Petras Jonavich said to Arsh:
- Arshlik, tell Andrey that I died without malice towards him and towards you.
I know that people are capable of fanatically justifying their criminal
activity with some ideas so much that they stop thinking sensibly and
separating black from white. Socialism, the distribution of goods, incomes,
privileges according to some social criterion - this is a temporary
phenomenon, a fit of rage, which most Rossian Peopls have now fallen into.
The naked, black-bearded doctor tilted his head in raven silver hair to one
side, took off his gold-rimmed glasses, and handed them to the commandant,
rubbed his hands together and stepped toward Arsh.
- And now, Arshliuka, let me shake your hand.
And Arsh could not help but shake hands with Doctor Srubov, whose eyes were,
as always, kind, whose voice, as always, was velvety soft:
- I wish you, Arshlyuk, a speedy recovery. Believe me, as an old doctor,
believe me as you believed as a univerboy when I treated you for scarlet
fever, that your illness has afflicted all Russian peoples, is curable and
over time this illness will disappear without a trace and forever. And the
case of someone who has recovered, a sufficient amount of antimatter always
appears. Goodbye.
The professor did not know that the destruction of the best and the promotion
of the worst would give rise to a reverse process of evolution and would
produce a special breed uniting all ethnic groups of the Soviet space - the
homosoviet and would cross the line of their return to human form.
And Doctor Srubov, afraid of losing his composure, turned away, hurriedly,
hunched over, and walked towards the 'shot wall'. And the member of the
Gubchek Board, Arsh Dichev, who was obliged to be present at the shootings
today, barely resisted the urge to run away from the basement.
And on the night of the execution of the doctor of medicine Patras Jonavich
Srubov, member of the Board of the Gubchek Arsh Dichev was transferred by
telegram to the same position of Member of the Board of the Gubchek in another
city, in the one where Andrei Srubov worked. And on the very first day of his
arrival, Arsh Dichev was sitting in Andrei Srubov's apartment and drinking
coffee with him. And Srubov's mother, a pale old woman with black eyes, in a
black dress and a black headscarf, when was making coffee, calling her son
from the dining room and whispering in the dark hallway:
- Andryusha, Arsh Dichev shot your dad, and you are sitting with him at the
same table.
Andrey Srubov gently touching his mother's face with the palms of his hands
and whispered:
- My dear mother, my dear mother, there is no need to talk about this, no need
to think about it. Make us another glass of coffee.
And he himself did not want to talk, did not want to think. But Arshliuka
Dichev considered it inconvenient not to talk and he talked. He talked,
stirring, clinking a spoon in a glass, carefully examining his hand, reddish
in red hair, in blue veins, lowering his red curly head, leaning over the
steaming coffee, inhaling its smell - strong, sharp, mixed with the soft smell
of boiling milk:
- There was no way not to shoot. The old man organized Society of Ideological
Struggle against Bolshevism - SISAB. He dreamed of such 'SISAB' throughout
Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and wanted to unite in them the scattered forces
of the intelligentsia, who were anti-Soviet. During the investigation, he
called them SiSABISTs...
He spoke, but did not raise his face from his glass. Srubov listened, slowly
filled his pipe, did not look at Katz, feeling that he did not want to speak,
that he was speaking only out of politeness. Srubov convinced himself that his
father's execution was necessary, that he, as a communist revolutionary, had
to agree with this unconditionally, without complaint. And his eyes were drawn
to the hand, with its short red fingers squeezing the glass with brown liquid,
to the hand that signed his father's death warrant. And, with a forced, false
smile, with a heavy effort, unclenching his lips, he said:
- You know, Arshliuka, when one simple-minded Chekist asked Lithuanian
nationalist during an interrogation how many people you had shot and for what,
he answered: 'We, gentlemen, seem to be adults, let's talk about something
more serious.' Understood?
- Okay, let's not talk.
Srubov shuddered because Arsh agreed so quickly with him that on his face,
clean-shaven, red, fleshy, with a hooked transparent nose, in his eyes, green,
bulging, there was a wooden indifference. And when Arsh fell silent, began to
drink, swallowing loudly, Srubov's thoughts quickly-quickly, one after
another, thoughts as excuse. Before whom? Maybe before Her - the Ideology of
dominance of The Social Comunistic criminal terrorist group justifying and
legitimizing its criminal terrorist activity, or maybe before himself. In
Srubov's eyes there was pain and shame, and a desire, passionate, irresistible
- to justify himself. And if there is no courage out loud, then at least to
himself, mentally to justify himself, to justify himself, to justify himself.
'I know for sure that every person, and therefore my father, is meat, bones,
blood. I know that the corpse of a shot person is meat, bones, blood. But why
fear? Why did I become afraid to go to the basement? Why do I stare at Arsh's
hand? Because freedom is fearlessness. This all from because to be free means,
first of all, to be fearless. Because I am not yet completely free. But it is
not my fault. Freedom and Power, Dominance of the Social Communist Groop of
Party are not easy things. If you unbandage a Chinese woman's mutilated legs,
she will start to fall, crawl on all fours until she learns to walk like a
human, develop her legs. She may have an ocean of daring, plans, impulses, but
hers legs are in the way.
Napoleon and Blindas undoubtedly had these stumps. And who among us doesn't
have deformed legs? Studying and practicing is probably not enough here - you
need to be reborn, grow a different skin.'
Arsh finished drinking self coffe and without lowering his glass, or he
thought out loud or said to Srubov:
- Of course, what's the point of talking, crying, philosophizing. Each of us,
perhaps, can whine. But us social revolution as a whole is implacable, firm
and cruel. The us social class as never stops in front a corpse - it will step
over it. And if you and I start to get all wet, they will step over us too.
And at this time in the Gubcheka, in basement No. 3, there is a trembling to
knees, shaking of hands, clicking of teeth of one hundred and twelve people.
And the commandant, who has thick sheepskin coat which red riding breeches,
who has a pink, shaved face and a white sheet of paper in his hands - a list,
orders one hundred and twelve arrested people to pack up out with their
things.
And the trembling, and shaking, and tears, and sighs, and groans precisely
because they were ordered to leave with their belongings. One hundred and
twelve participated in the uprising against the Soviet power, were captured
with weapons in their hands and knew that they would all be shot, all they
thought that if they were takened out with their belongings, they were being
taken out to be shot.
And so one hundred and twelve in black, red sheepskins, fragrant fur coats,
short fur coats, in colorful dog, deer, goat, calf fur coats, jackets, in
shaggy papakhas, in long-eared malakhai, in embroidered mukluks, in simple
rolled-up boots, having piled up their things in a spacious commandant's room,
they walk from the basement, from the dampness, from the darkness, from the
rats, from the swaying and damp shelves, from fear, from the languor of death,
from days of half-oblivion, from nights of insomnia, they walk into the
auditorium of the Gubchek club of the VChK battalion along the light wide
marble steps of the stairs, along the platforms where the sentries are like
statues, and the air is saturated with electric light, heated by the dry
breath of the heaters. A long, motley, hundred-headed, beast, with a soft
noise of its boots, obediently crawled after the commandant to the third
floor, covering all the chairs in the auditorium with its motley skin.
On the red cloth of the curtain of scene there is an inscription: 'THE SOVIET
POWER DOES NOT TAKE REVENGE ON DECEIVED PEASANTS'.
According to the syllables, with difficulty they did readid it and with a
hidden joyful hope they sighed, stirred, whispered. But in the green garlands
of pine branches on the walls there are other inscriptions, terrible,
frightening, contradictory:
'DEATH TO THE ENEMIES OF THE SOCIAL OCTOBER REVOLUTION', 'DEATH TO THE ENTENTE
AND ITS SERVANTS'.
And from this, in the motley skin there is a tremor and a whisper louder, more
excited:
- D-e-a-t-h... D-e-e-e-a-t-h... D-e-e-e-a-t...
The hall smelled of sweat, worn-out linen, foot wraps, sour sheepskins, and
tobacco. The commandant ordered the window to be opened. And the motley shaggy
animal greedily flared its nostrils, took in a full lungful of the fresh
dampness of melting snow, the strong intoxication of the first cold sweat of
the earth. The animal began to stir restlessly, with melancholy, creak the
chairs began. The healthy the men, strong one was drawn to the ground, he
wanted to bite into its black breast, to fall upon it with his large, sweaty,
wet body, soaked with hard work.
And Srubov and Katz, when they entered the hall, saw on the faces, in the eyes
of the arrested peasants a gray melancholy, they understood that it was from
idleness, from the stuffiness of the basement, from the painful expectation of
death, what this the sad about the land, on work.
Srubov quickly, with elastic, wide strides, came out onto the stage. Tall, in
black leather trousers and jacket, black-bearded, black-haired, with a
revolver at his side, against the red background of the curtain, he looked as
if cast from cast iron. He looked boldly into the eyes of the tamed, motley,
strong beast. He said his first word of address with the joy of a tamer,
confident of victory:
- Comrades...
Quietly, slowly, slightly singsong. As if he stroked the stubborn, stiff fur
of beast and he caused a light, tickling shudder throughout the motley skin.
Like a tamer calmly opening the cage of a tamed beast Srubov calmly
announced:< br /> - In an hour you all will be released.
One hundred and twelve pairs of eyes flashed with fiery, sparkling joy. The
motley beast roared excitedly and joyfully. And from the window come in saloon
a continuous stream of intoxicating melting the air. The nostrils flared
stronger and wider, the spring intoxication made heads spin. And Srubov got
drunk from the intoxicating breath of the approaching spring, from the
intoxicating animal joy of one hundred and twelve people. Large fiery clouds
of words, joy, puffing out their chests scattered like a sunny, blinding rain
of sparks over the motley play of the beast, clicking, playng the fur, and
began to run around with piercing red, blue, green lights.
- Comrades... Comrades, the Revolution is not tax collection of foods for
liders, not executions, not the Cheka. In the sea of fire, the charred figure
of the executed father flashed and disappeared, burned.
- The Revolution is the brotherhood of workers. You give to Sovijet power all
what hav , but Soviet power give to you more - the Life..
After the propaganda concert, the performance promoting an ideology justifying
terrorist, criminal activity of organized crime in the name of the Communist
Party, according to the class social pretext, the freed motley beast, with a
satisfied growl, with a stomp, hundreds of legs, ran through the open gates
into the street.
And the Chekists became intoxicated with joy, with causeless, animal joy of
life, because that night, a white, three-story stone house with a red flag,
with a red sign, with guards at the gates and doors, saw something
unprecedented.
And this time from out of the gate of offise of Chek the bads blooders
Gubcheks employees came laughing and shouting loudly. The Gubchek chairman, a
boy, ran ahead, grabbed a handful of snow, crushed it and smacked it on Vanka
Mudynya's face. Vanka choked with laughter and squealed.
- I'll give at you now, Comrade Srubov.
Mudynya was supported by the gloomy Gozhe. Srubov immediately got two white
cold lumps in the back and neck. Srubov threw another lump into the pile of
Chekists, and the Chekists, like schoolchildren running out into the street
for a long break, began to squeal and pelt one othersselves with snow. A lump
of snow - a lump of laughter. Laughter - snow. And genuine joy, causeless,
drunken, the animal joy of life.
Srubov was covered in snow, whitened from head to toe. The faces of the
untouchables - the sentries - were also snow.
They said goodbye, parted tired, with wet collars, with wet red burning hands
and cheeks. Srubov shook Kats's hand, looked at him with clear shiny black
eyes.
- Goodbye, Arshliuka. Everything is fine, Arshlyuka. Revolution is fraud,
lies, strahd, blood, life. Long live the Revolution, Arsh.
And at home Srubov had a hearty supper. And, getting up from the table, he
grabbed the sad, black woman-mother and started spinning around the room with
her. The mother was didn't know whether to be angry or laugh, she was loud
breathed of gread choking from the wild rounds of the unexpected waltz.
- Andrey, you've gone crazy. Let go, Andrey... Srubov laughed.
- Everything is fine, Mommy. Long live the Life... Long live the Revolution,
Mommy!
VII
The interrogated person is in the middle of the office. A bright light is
shining in his eyes. Behind him, on the sides, there is darkness. In front,
face to face - Srubov. The interrogated person sees only Srubov and two guards
on the edge of the illuminated section of the floor.
Srubov looks at the papers, not paying any attention to the person being
interrogated. Not look at him. And interrogated is worried, fiddling with his
feeble, barely visible moustache. Preparing to answer. He doesn't lower his
eyes from Srubov. Waiting for him to start asking questions. In vain. Five
minutes - silence. Ten. Fifteen. Doubt creeps in as to whether there will be
an interrogation. Maybe they called him simply to announce the release order?
Thoughts about freedom are light, joyful. And suddenly, unexpectedly:
- Your name, patronymic, last name?
Asked and did not raise his head. As if it was not him and all shifts the
papers from one place to another. The interrogated man shuddered, answered.
Srubov did not even think to write it down. But still, the question was asked.
The interrogation has begun.
Five minutes - silence. And again:
- Your name, patronymic, last name?
The interrogated person confused. He was counting on another question. But
answered, and began to calm himself to himself down - what is not special what
asked him agained.
And another pause:
- Your name, patronymic, last name?
The interrogated is taken aback. And Srubov pretends not to notice anything.
And another pause. And another question:
- Your name, patronymic, last name?
The person being interrogated understands that something is wrong, but does
not understand the reason, cannot collect his thoughts. He is sitting far from
the wall on a stool without a back. The wall is not visible. The darkness is
loose. There is nothing to lean against. And this light in the eyes. The
guards' rifles. Srubov finally raises his head. His gaze is pressing. He does
not ask questions. He tells what unit the person being interrogated served in,
where it was stationed, what tasks it performed, who the commander was. Srubov
speak confidently, as if reading from a service record. The person being
interrogated is silent, his head nodding.
Hobstructed the promotion of Soviet power, provided armed resistance to
Sovietic terrorist, extrimist gangs, and contributed to the establishment of
law and order in the territories occupied by Soviet power in accordance with
democratic moral and social norms.
Srubov hides the paper in his briefcase. He casually throws out:
- The next one.
And not a word about this man. What whether he was what or not. Srubov does
not like the weak, those who give in easily, those who recognize the right
from name of the Soviet power to punish for disloyalty and opposition to
advancement the criminal terrorist groop. He like destroy were by clever,
brave enemies, the enemies to the end.
The exdid interrogated man wrings his hands:
- Please, have mercy. I will be your agent, I will give you everyone...
Srubov didn't even look. And only to the escort once more, insistently:
- Next, next.
After interrogating this thin-mustached man, Srubov soul is filled with a
shudder of disgust, it's like on crushed a woodlouse.
The next person be the interrogated was an artillery captain. An open face, a
look direct, confident, and ower apponent. Srubov asked right away:
- Did you serve the Whites for a long time?
- From the very beginning.
- An artilleryman?
- An artilleryman.
- You didn't take part in the battle near Lazu?
- Of course, I did.
- Was that your battery stationed in the forest near the village?
- Mine.
- Ha-ha-ha-ha!..
Srubov unbuttons his jacket and undershirt. The captain is surprised. Srubov
laughs and bares his right shoulder:
- Look, you've really screwed me hit up.
There are three deep pink scars on the shoulder. The shoulder is withered:
- I was wounded by shrapnel near Lazu. I was the regiment commissar then.
The captain is exuse, twists his long moustache, looks at the eya. And as
Srubov is like an old friend to him.
- It's okay, this is in open combat.
He didn't interrogate for long. The captain wasn't on the wanted list. He
signed the release order. When parting, they exchanged long, intent, simple
human glances. He was left alone, lit a cigarette, smiled, and wrote down the
captain's name in his pocket notebook as a keepsake.
And in the next room there is a commotion. A muffled scream. Srubov listened.
A scream again. The scream squeeze on our fingers hoops. Water, scream between
the letters.
Srubov into the hallway.
To the door.
DUTY INVESTIGATOR.
Locked.
He knocked, hands hurt.
Knocked wich a revolver.
- Comrade Chernetsky, open up! I'll break it in.
Door open, Srubov did undestend did broke it or Cerneckyy own opened.
A black Turkish sofa. On it lies the defendant Rekashiene. White, bare legs,
white scraps of lace, white underwear and nice face fainting.
And Cherneckyy is red, wet, sloppy and sweaty.
And half an hour later, the arrested Ivanov and Rekashiene are in Srubov's
office. They are sitting next to each other in armchairs by the left wall.
Both are pale. Their eyes are big and black. On the right wall, on the sofa,
on the chairs, are all the responsible workers. They are wearing service
jackets, protective tunics, leather jackets, and multi-colored trousers.
Black, red, and green.
Everyone smoked. Their faces were gray and cloudy from the smoke.
Srubov was in the middle at the table. He had a large pencil in his hand. He
was talking and drew lines the pencil:
- Why not rape her if she'll be shot anyway? What a temptation for a slave's
soul.
Rekashiyne is not good, with cold hands tightly gripped the cold leather
handles of the chair.
- It is allowed to shoot, to rob it's allowed to rape. Everything is allowed.
But what if everyone is Cherneckyy ?..
He looked to the right and to the left. Everyone was silent. All were sucking
on own cigarettes:
- No, not everything is allowed. What is allowed only is allowed.
He broke the pencil and threw it on the table with force. Jumped up and
sticking out his shaggy black beard:
- This is the revolution, not clericalism. Terror, but not mischief.
He picked up the pencil again. - Revolution is not what my left leg wants.
Revolution...
He scribbled with a pencil.
- Firstly...
And slowly, deliberately:
- for everybody o-r-g-a-n-i-z-a-t-i-o-n-a-l job.
He paused.
- Secondly...
He scribbled again. And also:
- The action planning...
He tore the paper:
- C-a-l-c-u-l-i-a-t-i-o-n !
Srubov left the table, walks around the office. His beard to the right, his
beard to the left. He presses himself against the wall. And he spreads his
arms all over the place, as if he were picking up a brick from the floor and
laying it, rows - a foundation, walls, roof, pipes.
- VChK this is Huge Building Big of Plant.
- Revolution is a mechanical plant. for Each mechanism, each screw has its own
do. what is a elements? The elements are steam, not squeezed into a boiler,
electricity, walking like a thunderstorm on the earth. Us Revolution has a
progressive movement from the elements are captured in the iron framework of
order, expediency. Electricity for us is good electricity when it is in a
steel mesh of wires. Steam is good steam when it is in a boiler.
Walks between the chairs, pointing with his fingers:
- what fuel does the revolution run on? Rigted Mass anger, organized through
propaganda for the purpose of self-defense...
Strong iron tiles, one to one in the heads of the listeners of Srubov’s
thoughts.
He finished, stopped in front of the commandant, knitted his brows, stood
there and said quite firmly voice did not allow any objections:
- Shoot them both right now. Him first. Let her look.
The Chekists immediately stood up with a noise, left without looking back,
silently. Only Pepel turned around in the doorway and said firmly, like
Srubov:
- This is right. Revolution - no philosophies.
Cherneckyy's head is on his chest, mouth is open. Always walked upright, but
now he's slouched. Rekashiene let out a little scream, face is made of
alabaster, and unconscious fell down on the floor . Srubov noticed her torn,
high, warm galoshes eaten rats had, maybe in the basement.
He looked at his watch, stretched, went to the phone, and called:
- Mom, is that you? I'm going home.
Recently, Srubov began to be afraid of the dark, and when he arrived, his
mother light in all the rooms of his spacious apartment.
VIII
Srubov saw a miracle - White and Red paints wove a gray web of everyday life,
his, Srubov's, web gray of life of everidayof days.
White pulled the web from institution to institution, from headquarters to
headquarters, laid narrow, strong loops around the white three-story stone
house, pulling the ends together in one place, outside the city, in the rotten
little house of the ex guard of the provincial land department vegetable
gardens. White wove the web at night, in dark backyards, in dead-end alleys,
hiding from Red paint, thinking that Red did not see, did not know. Red spun
the web parallel to Bely's web - thread to thread, knot to knot, loop to loop,
but pulled the ends together in another place - in the white three-story stone
house. Red spun day and night, did not stop working for a minute. He hiding
from White, he was sure that White paint did not see, did not know.
Both White paint and Red paint have a tense haste of work, each the hope for
the strength of his web, the calculation to entangle, deceive, steal and tear
the web of the other self comrades.
Namely, in haste, in tension, in alertness - in the confusion of one's own and
the desired other - Srubov's everyday life. Not sleeping for weeks or sleeping
without undressing, on a chair at a table, on a table, in a sleigh, in the
saddle, in a car, in a rush, on the brake, eating dry food, on the move,
receiving, meeting, questioning, instructing dozens of agents, reading,
writing, signing hundreds of papers and all barely holding your head up,
barely dragging your legs from fatigue - everyday life.
And so every day, without undressing, falling asleep at the table in a chair
or lying down for an hour at sofos, or for two on the sofa, in a continuous
dirty avalanche of people, in mountains of paper, in blue-gray clouds of
tobacco smoke, Srubov worked day and nigts long. This service in the Cheka is
a red-gray, gray-red mess. Red and White, White and Red. And an endless tangle
of the web - the third year.
And now, when all the preparations have been made, all the orders have been
given, the alien web is firmly braided with its own web, when employees with
orders, with mandates, without any documentary justification did send where
everything should be, as it should be and when it should be, when it is quiet
and empty in the white three-story house, only on the floor the security
company of the Cheka battalion is quietly on duty, when at night you need to
wait for the results of the hot work of the last weeks, when there are exactly
two hours left before the start of the raid, searches, arrests, unauthorized
forceful actions, when you want to sleep - Srubov once again open the black
leather folder on the table and rummed through stacks of scraps of paper,
scraps, reread scraps of thoughts, prop up your heavy head with your hand,
yawn, smoke.
A large sheet of graph paper:
'What is a public execution like the guillotine in France? Public executions
surround the death of a person, even the most with грозного an aura heroism,
his thoughts, testimony, the causes of the conflict and the actibed
justification of the criminal activity of the violence remain mif. Public
executions agitate, give moral strength to victims of violence, crimes,
enemies of an organized group that has usurped operational and executive
authorities.
Public executions leave evidence for relatives and clouse, corpses, a grave,
last words, publications, the exact date of death. The executed person is not
completely destroyed and continues to fight beyond the brink of heown
oblivion.
This is in France, and we have a basement. A secret execution. A secret
execution, in a basement, without any effects, without announcing the verdict,
sudden, the removal of all documentary evidence of his life before censorship
of public publications has an overwhelming effect on the enemies. A huge,
merciless, all-seeing machine suddenly grabs its victims and grinds them up
like in a meat grinder. After the execution, there is no exact day of death,
no last words, no corpse, not even a grave. Emptiness. The enemy is completely
destroyed.'
Blank - Chairman of the Provincial Extraordinary Commission for Combating
Counter... Further, an uneven piece of paper is torn out. The surviving strip
reads:
'1. At 9 o'clock a meeting with Arutyev. 2. Ask the quartermaster why they
gave out rotten lard this month.
3. Tomorrow is the citywide meeting.
4. Give Yurasik some pants and something sweet.'
Signed search protocol. On the clean end, in blue pencil:
'Terror must be organized so that the work of the executioner-executor is
almost no different from the work of the leader-theorist. One said - terror is
necessary, the other pressed the button of the machine gun-shooter. The main
what thing is not to see blood.
When in the future an "enlightened" human society will riged itself of
superfluous or criminal members by means of gases, acids, electricity, deadly
bacteria and heavy unskilled labor in conditions poorly compatible with the
survival of life - then there will be no need for basements ChKA. Comrades
scientists, with a scientific air, will completely fearlessly immerse living
people in huge flasks, retorts and with the help of all sorts of compounds,
reactions, distillations will begin to turn them into wax, and Vaseline, into
lubricating oil and using their organs for the transfer to more useful members
of society.
When these wise Soviet chemists open their laboratorys for the benefit of
soviet social clan humanity, there will be not information of kill people,
there will be no death, no wars. The word "cruelty" will disappear. Only
chemical experiments and tests will remain for the benefit of the evolution of
Soviet people to working primates of the dominating Soviet elite.'
From the notebook: 1. Submit the order to register rifled weapons to the
newspaper.
2. Consult with Nachoso.
3. Systematically write down thoughts about terror. When there is time - to
write a book.
4. Talk to Professor Lansberges about electrons.
A scrap of glossy drawing paper. A drawing of a machine gun. On the inside, in
small red ink:
'Our work is extremely difficult. It is not for nothing that the institution
is often called the emergency commission. All Chekists are emergency people.
Once a high-ranking comraded told me that a Chekist who shot fifty
counter-revolutionaries deserves to be the fifty-first to be shot.
Very nice. So it turns out that they teoretic revoliutionersare first-class
people, them theoretically find terror necessary. Mybe for them this Good, but
the picture is roughly as follows: for them there are insects that harm grain
crops and them have enemies - the same insects - we.
Revolutionary theorists use the second persons to devour the first by bicause
various material blessings, privileges, and wealth. The second devours the
first. The proceeds from this goto fall into the hands of public figures, and
the unfortunate exterminators, extortionists, grabbers, murderers and looters
are no longer needed and cannot be counted among those calmly eating white
buns Soviet public figures.'
But will be fine and if your head is heavy, your eyes red and sleep is
weighing down on your shoulders and back like lead, fold it up all, cover your
chest, face and beard with this the black folder and sleep, sleep, sleep.
And outside the windows in the blue darkness the scurrying tramp of feet, the
crunch of ice of invisible puddles, the hum of voices, the rustle of the
crowd, the humming waves of those going to matins. On the cathedral bell tower
the bell, the largest and oldest, grey-green from age, with a black iron
tongue lazily licked copper grey-green lips and grumbled:
'0-o-o-mi-m-o-o-omi-m-o-o-omim...'
In the office there was smock tobacco, stuffiness, the bright light of an
electric chandelier and the continuous, ringing tremor of the telephone
hammer. Metallic flies were crawling into both of Srubov's ears:
'Zh-zh-z-dr-r-r-dr-r-r-r-z-z-z...'
And got what they wanted - they woke up Srubov. My head was heavie, eyelids
were stuck together, it was bitter and dry in my mouth. But the thought was
immediately correct, clear - it had begun.
And it began. The left hand does not let go of the receiver from the ear.
Outfrom the phone reports, into the phone - orders. At the table is a map of
the city, eyes on it, the right hand puts crosses over captured areas, secret
squares, weapons depots, tears, cuts with short slanted lines a thin tangled
web. On Srubov's lips there is a bitter, ironic smile.
Half-starved soviet pover imperiously, heavily, with bare feet steps on the
gilded joy of those greeting Christ, on the white sweet pyramids of cottage
cheese and Easter cakes. The pots and bowls on the church cornices have gone
out, the ringing of the church has died down, the rustle of footsteps has died
down, only the tramp of those who have fled, will hidineg in their homes.
Silence, tense stillness, horror are over the city, and in the black blue of
the spring night the blue of Her - the social terror, the dictatorship of
violence, lies and deception, Her watchful, angry eyes.
Srubov couldn't sit still in his office. He called Katzas back from the raid,
sat him down in his chair and raced through the city in car. With a triumphant
roar and snort, flashing his big eyes like lanterns, the strong steel beast
rushed through the streets of cyti. But the city was empty, the people had
retreated to the backyards, to dark corners, to the underground.
In Srubov memory only the arrest of the guard of the provincial vegetable
gardens Ivan Nikiforovich Chirkalov and former colonel Micoly Kalmant remained
. The colonel held himself proudly and calmly. Srubov could not resist and
quipped:
- Christ is risen, sir colonel.
And, sedaum them in his car, he added:
- Oh, gardener, you planted radishes and grew horseradish penis.
Chudayev remained silent and only pulling his cap down over his eyes.
Frightened ladies in elegant dresses, men in frock coats, white shirts.
Solomin is imperturbably calm, sniffling, breakingef the mothballed peace of
the chests:
- Tell me, how many of you bourgeois are here pryachitsya. We'll leave each
one a fur coat. Izlishki am will take.
And still ostalos in memory, this when he examined the of selected weapons as
proudly, joyfully heart beat, strong power of red honor spread through all his
muscles.
The rest is night, day, streets, streets, chains, chains of patrols, wind in
the ears, the smell of gasoline, the shaking of a car seat, the slamming of a
door, weakness in the legs, noise, heaviness in the head, pain in the eyes,
apartments, rooms, corners, beds, people - awake, with traces of insomnia on
their gray faces, sleepy, surprised, sleeping, frightened, security officers,
Red Army soldiers, rifles, grenades, revolvers, tobacco, shag and gray-red,
red-gray and White, Red and Red, White. And after such a night, day and
another night, need receive ansd send into the basement, relatives, close
persons of those arrested.
The visitors asking for release own relatines, close - is fools. Srubov is
attentive and indifferent. He sits, although in the office chair, but at a
huge height, he does not see faces, figures of the visitors at all. Some small
black dots are moving - and that's all.
The old woman asks for her son, cries:
- Have pity on him, he one and only for me.
She falls to her knees, her cheeks in tears, wipes herself with the end of her
handkerchief. Srubov thinks her face is no bigger than a pinhead. The old
woman bows at him feet. She lowers, raises her head - brightens, darkens. The
sound of her voice barely reached his ears:
- One and only...
But what can he tell her? He is an enemy, she is an enemy - family or single,
one and only- it makes no difference. And what difference does it make - one
person more or less.
For Srubov there are no people here, he has forgotten about their existence.
Requests do not bother, do not touch. Hefuses is light tell:
- We do not care whether he is the only one you have or not. If he is guilty,
we will shoot him. You'll give birth to more one one and only, grandma.
One pinhead disappeared, another popped out.
- The only breadwinner, husband... five a children.
Old story. And for the Old story one too such ansfer:
- Marital status is not taken into account.
The pin turns red and pales. Srubov's face, motionless, stony, deathly pale,
horrifies her.
The pin-dots keep coming out. Srubov is the same with everyone - relentlessly
cruel, cold.
One dot moved close, close to the table. And when it moved away again, a small
dark pile remained on the table. Srubov slowly realized – she had given a
bribe. Without descending from his unattainable height, he threw a few
words-icicles into the telephone receiver. The dot turned black with fear, and
began to babble senselessly:
- You don't take. others of you taked. It happened...
- The investigation will find out who took from you. We will shoot and you,
and those who took from you.
There were other visitors - all the same dots pinheads. During the entire
reception Srubov felt very lighting - at an exorbitant height, only him be
felt a little cold . That's probably why my face turned stony white.
Relatives, close ones could, of course, humbly ask, tremble, cry, stand in
line with poor bundles of parcels, pass on sweet paskhas, rich Easter cakes,
painted eggs to the arrested - the white three-story stone house is
inexorable, cruel, like the its hands of clock mechanism.
Relatives could still come with sweets and pastries when the arrested,
photographed with a chalk number on their chests, had already made their way
from basement No. 3 to prison, from prison tied up to basement No. 2, from
there to No. 1 and, consequently, to the cemetery, when the drafts of their
files, already submitted to the archive, were smoking in the garbage dump in
the yard, they were always burned in the Gubchek. When yellow, fat, hairless
rats were with strong teeth, licking their blood with sharp red tongues
arresteds. To the arrested the tranfers not of reached, all the transfers were
transferred of relatives, close ones could to the food bank of the Cheka.
A white three-story stone house with a red flag, a red sign, with sentries
indifferently baring the cast-iron teeth of the gate, sticking out red white
tongues of blood and lime, as saliva from, that flowed from the cars carrying
the corpses and was be always sprinkled with lime - this home knows no grief,
no sad from neither those who work in it, nor who are brought to it, nor those
who come to it.
IX
In order to justify, legitimize and promote the criminal activities of the
ChKA and other responsible soviet persons to satisfy own material needs, a
legend was developed at a board meeting about the exposure of a certain
mythical anti-Lithuanian organization of gotovyashei counterrevoljucionnyi
perevorot:
- Group "A" - fifteen fives, former high-ranking combat officers and
responsible servants from among the employees of Soviet institutions. Its task
is to seize the party school and artillery warehouse.
- Group B - ten fives, former officers, former traders, small entrepreneurs,
shopkeepers, servis of soldiers, several people from the Red Army command
staff. The task is to take the telegraph, telephone exchange, the Provincial
Executive Committee.
- Group C - seven fives, rabble. The task is the train station.
- According to the legend of the Gubchek, after capturing the designated
points and allocating a sufficient number of posts to guard them, they planned
to unite all the groups, move some Red Army units to their side, attack the
Gubchek, and fight with troops loyal to the Soviet power. The organization, in
addition to the thirty-two fives, had many sympathizers, helping and
performing second of role of persons.
At the meeting of the Gubchk Board, Srubov felt very good. He was at a high
altitude. And the people, colleagues, comrades - somewhere far, far below. And
from this height he saw, as if on the palm of his hand, how, through the
manipulations of the operational structure, one can entangle the web of one's
criminal do with a cunning tangle and tear apart web selfown comrades, and
thus justify one's criminal and ensure the advancement of one's own criminal
acts. Srubov is full of proud awareness of his own strength and greatness.
Based on fabricated facts and extracted confessions, the investigator reports
his findings:
- ...an active member of the organization, his task...
Everyone listened attentively. The office was completely quiet, only Arsh had
a not good health runny nose and You could hear him snoring quietly. The
electric light bulb was flickering intermittently. The investigator had
finished. He was silented and looked at Srubov. Srubov asked him:
- Your conclusion?
The investigator rubs his hands together, shrugs, and cringes:
- I suppose the highest measure of punishment. Srubov nods his head.
And to everyone:
- There is a proposal - to shoot. Dela into v arhiv - szhech... Objections?
Questions?
Janucovich blushed, dipped his moustache in a glass of tea:
- Well, of course.
- So, shoting ?
Srubov is amused. Arsh, blowing his nose, confirmed:
- Shoting to he.
- The case of next one.
The investigator runs his hand over his black stubble of hair and begins a new
report:
- the supplier of weapons, who could have thought of him like that, it turns
out was...
- What about he, comrades?
Arsh lowered his head, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, and
concentrated on lighting a cigarette. Janukovich thoughtfully stirred his tea
with a spoon.
It seemed that no one had heard anything. Srubov was silent. Then he said
loudly and decisively from everyone:
- Accepted.
Surnames, surnames, surnames, ranks, positions and titles. Once the meeting
Yanukovych tried to object and began to prove:
- In my opinion, this man is not guilty...
Srubov resolutely stopped him and said angrily:
- Well, you, sugar almonds, shut up. The Cheka is an instrument of class
reprisals. Understand? If reprisals, then it is not a court. Personal
responsibility is of decisive importance to us, but not the same as for a
Court or a Tribunal. What is more important to us is social status, class,
caste, diaspora affiliation. Does this person taked belong to us, is he our
subject, a slave... And that's all.
Arsh Dichev, energetically raising his clenched fists, supported Srubov.
- Revolution - no philosophy. Shooting !
Katzas also spoke in favor of shot execution and began to blow his nose
vigorously.
Srubov is at his best. There is no fear, cruelty, or anything illegal. And
talk about moral and immoral, moral and amoral is nonsense, prejudice.
Although the pinheads need all this crap. And why does he, Srubov? It is
important for him to rob, appropriate, rape and not allow the consequences of
these pinheads' discontent. How, in what way - it makes no difference. And at
the same time, Srubov believes that this is not so. Not everything and not
everyone is allowed. Everyone has their own boundaries. But how not to cross
them? How to stay on them if everything is allowed? There is no law, there is
an opinion that has already given rise to irresponsibility and impunity, and,
consequently, permissiveness.
Srubov face was pale. There were folds between his eyebrows. Srubov did not
listen to the investigator-reporter. He was thinking about how to stop at the
limit of what was permitted. And where was it? He was standing on something
very sharp with one foot, the other foot and hands trying to keep his balance.
He was doing it with difficulty. And only, it seems, by the end of the meeting
he became stable and firm with both feet. He was very happy, he found a way to
stay at the limit. It turns out that everything depends on a pointed,
triangular pyramid, and of course, he discovered its presence in his brain. It
is of iron hardness and purity. Its composition is exclusively critical and
controlling electrons. Smiling, he stroked his head, and pressed his hair
tighter to his skull so that the precious pyramid would not jump out. Srubov
calmed down.
The first to sign the protocol was Srubov. Singned clearly, with large rings
and pressure, he, from the "o" he pulled a thin thread and attached it to the
end of a thick long stick, replacing the letter "v". The entire signature is a
piece of twisted wood shavings, hung on a pole. The members of the board
hesitated for a second. Each waited for someone else to take the pen first and
stanf signature.
Arsh decisively grabbed pen from Srubov and against the word "Members" he
quickly scribbled - Arsh Dichev.
Srubov frowned gloomily. From the white sheet of paper sent a wind in his face
as from a cold snow pit. The grave is unpleasant for Srubov. It is alien but
it is underfoot. The text is handwritten and between the last name of the last
sentenced person and Srubov's signature there is one centimeter. A centimeter
higher - and he is among those sentenced to death. Srubov even thought that
the typist would definitely make a mistake when copying it and put him on the
same level as those sentenced exicution.
And when they were about to leave, Srubov's attention was drawn to the shaved
back of Kazas's head. He couldn't help but joke:
- What a gorgeous officer's back of your head you have, Ika - steep, wide. You
can't miss.
Katzas turned pale, frowned, and Srubov felt awkward about what he had said,
so without looking at each other, without saying goodbye, they went out into
the corridor.
And the last sheet of paper from the log black folder of Srubov crumpled,
unevenly torn, with knotty blue veins of text lines.
If we were to shoot all the survivors of victims, the witnesses to doing of
the criminal terrorist group organized on the basis of the ChKA and did doing
criminal from name the Soviet regime's in a basement ChKA, it would take a
long lot time.
So, in order to speed up the process, it was decided to exicutiom most be
outside the city. Them immediately stripped everyone and stand placed at the
of ditch-grave. Bozhe suggested that all those them chopped to death with
sabers - refused.
Their it was shoting ten people at once in the back of the head with
revolvers. Some of the condemned sat down on the edge of the ditch out of fear
dangling their legs into it. Some cried, prayed, asked for mercy, tried to
escape. The picture is common. But around the place of executions a chain of
horse guards was set up, not a single one of them was escape - they were all
hacked to pieces.
Cerneckiyy howleding, demanded Srubov - "Call comrade Srubov! I have valuable
testimony. Stop the execution. I will still be useful to you. I am an
ideological communist." And when Srubov approached him, he did not recognize
hir, his eyes widened senselessly, end he roared - "Call comrade Srubov!" But
shoot him need be . It turned out that he had too bloody a past and all
investigers were tired of statements about him. And besides he already gave
gived everything he could. Is fool the Cherneckyy.
But Srubov was still lot amazed, delighted by the fact that the revolution,
the Soviet regime, had taught most of these people fatal dignity. Srubov, as a
boy, had read how during the Japanese war the Cossacks forced the Honghuzi to
dig graves, sat them on the edge and chopped off their heads one by one. He
had liked that Easter calm, that imperturbability with which the Honghuzi
awaited the fatal blow. Now he saw Soviet Honghuzi, subjects, slaves of the
Soviet regime, and admired the spectacle when a long line of naked people,
illuminated by the moon, froze in complete silence and peace, as if lifeless,
like a row of plaster alabaster statues in awaiting death. He was especially
did impressed by the women: they held on tightly and died silently, without
complaint, better than the men.
Someone was shouting from the shot pit: "Comrades, finish them off!" Solomin
jumped into the pit onto the corpses, walked over them for a long time, turned
them over, finished them off. It was difficult, hardcult to finish them off,
because was the night did be moonlit, but cloudy.
When the moon did lit up the bloody faces of the executed, the faces of the
corpses, Srubov for some reason thought about his own death. They was dieded-
and he will die too. The law of the earth is cruel, simple - be born, give
birth, die. And Srubov thought about humanity, the mans - is it really he,
drilling the ether of the universe with the eyes of telescopes, tearing the
boundaries of the earth, rummaging in the dust of centuries, reading
hieroglyphs, greedily grasping at the present and boldly rushing into the
future, he who conquered the earth, water, air, is it really he will never be
immortal? To live, to work, to love, to hate, to suffer, to study, to
accumulate a lot of experience, knowledge and to then become a stinking
carrion... Absurdity...
They returned from the shot exicution with the sunrise. Walking to the car,
Srubov stepped on an anthill. Dozens of ants dug into his boots. Srubov
remembered the thought, he did droving and thoughid: even a bug enters into a
mortal fight for the right to live, eat, give birth. A bug gnaws at the throat
of a bug. And people philosophize, pile up all sorts of stupid theories and
torture themselves. Arshliuka says: "Revolution is no philosophy", but he
doesn't take a step without "philosophy". Is it really all just like that - be
born, lived , die and every only a empty?
X
Then there was longing for father, for child. There was a long binge. There was a two-month vacation. There was a difuthion from the position of the head of the provincial chek. There was a bed in a clinic for the mentally ill. A lot happened in a few months.
And now this interrogation in ChKA. Srubov is thin, yellow, with blue circles under his eyes. The leather suit is worn right on the bones. Only body, no muscles. Breathing is intermittent, hoarse.
And interrogating it Arsh Dichevas. His face for he a round teapot. His nose is a sharp pipe, turned down. You want to stand up and forcefully poke your thumb into the hated pipe, to shut it up. And he sits there, pretending to be the boss at Srubov desk. Red paw smeared all in ink. And interrogation is torture. If at least he interrogated. Where there - he gives a lecture: the authority of the party, the prestige of the Cheka. And all the time nose with the pipe up, up, as if he is shoving it into the very heart, picking.
And Arsh Dichevas interrogates him. His face is like a round teapot. His nose is a sharp pipe, bent downwards. Srubov want to stand up and forcefully poke your thumb into the hated pipe so that it shuts up. And sits the Arsh, pretending to be a boss at the Srubov table. His pen is white ivory, and his paw is red, all in ink, and interrogation is torture. If only he would at least interrogation, where there - he gives a lecture: the authority of the party, the prestige of the Cheka. And all the time his nose is up, up, as if he is shoving it into the very heart, picking.
Srubov tears his beard. Grits his teeth. With fiery hating eyes see Arsh. Resentment runs through his veins like sulfuric acid. Burns, twirls. He couldn't stand it. Jumped up and threw at him:
- You understand, you bastard, that I served the Revolution with blood, I gave it everything, and now I'm a squeezed lemon. And I need juice. Got it, the juice of alcohol, if there's no more juice blood.
For a moment Dichevas, the investigator, the head of the provincial Cheka, turned into the former Arshliuka. He looked at Srubov with gentle eyes:
- Andrejus, why are you angry? I know you served well, but you couldn't stand it?
And because Dichunas was fighting with Arshliuka, because it was painful, he winced and said:
- Well, put yourself in my place. Well, tell me, what should I do when you began to disgrace us, to lower our dignity?
Srubov waved his hand, stood up and walkin the office. The bones in his knees crunched, his leather pants rustled louded. At Arsh he did no looked . Was it worth paying attention to this nonentity?
And here She stood before him the Revolution - a great lover, hot and greedy. Hey, he gave the best years of his life. More - his whole life. She took everything - soul, blood and strength. And threw away him the beggar and the weaken. She, insatiable, she likes only the young, healthy, full-blooded. A squeezed lemon is not needed for the common cause. Scraps into the garbage pit. How many people like Srubov are on her path, exhausted, weakened and of no use to anyone - The Revolution irresponsibility and impunity for the chosen ones proletariat public and official person.
Srubov clearly sees her as crueled and blooded. He wants to throw his own curses, the bitterness of disappointment in Her as a burning lump in Her face. But his hands are powerless. His tongue is powerless. Srubov sees that She herself is a beggar, in blood and rags. She is poor, intellectually, spiritually poor, and that, because is why she is embittered and cruel of all of to everything that is beyond her wretched understanding.
But both the invalid and the scrap want are still alived and want to live, but the garbage man myasnik has already arrived with a knafe and a broom. There he sits - with his pipe up. They decided to destroy him, but Srubov doesn't want to go into the pit. It won't work. He'll manage to hide. They won't find him. to Live, live... Let only his cap remain on the table and wich a sly, poisonous smile to Arsh:
- Citizen of the provincial Cheka, am I not under arrest yet? May I go to the toilet?
And out the door. And down the corridor, almost running. And Arsh, who has become Dichiunas again, the head of the provincial Cheka, blushes with shame for his momentary weakness. He twists the handle of the telephone with all his might, asks the prison warden if there is a free solitary cell. He lights a cigarette, waits for Srubov, firmly and calmly signs the order for his arrest.
But Srubov was already on the street. The sidewalks were crowded and crowded. He was throwing his long, bony legs wide in the middle of the road. He was waving his arms. His hair was sticking up in the wind in all directions. Curious people stopped and pointed. He saw nothing. He only remembered that he had to run. He turned corners several times. Street names and house numbers didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was to hide. He was out of breath, falling, getting up and moving on again. There was clapping, some doors were opening. He have the one hope was growing that he would succeed in escaping, hope they wouldn’t catch him...
And suddenly, unexpectedly, like a misfortune, a black impenetrable wall blocked the road - Solomin. And behind his back is a double - Katz. It turns out he was chasing after him the whole time. Didn't look back - didn't see. Now he's happy - he caught up and he is, gasping for air like a fish making a faces.
Srubov fell on the bridge, waving his arms, wanting to scream but only wheezing:
- I... I... I...
And on his back, on his shoulders, on his head, black ash, a burning black mountain, painfully pressing and burning.
And on the same day, whan the Red Army soldiers of the VChK battalion played checkers in the club, cracked nuts, listened to Vanda Jankauskite play "incomprehensible" on the piano, Efim Solomin spoke banered from a high box at the socialists rally:
- Comrades, our party Re-Ka-Py, our teachers Marx and Lenin - selected, sorted wheat. We communists - not a bad kind of wheat. Well, non-party members - tails, chaff. A non-party member - where will he understand what? No way. According to him, we one murderers and our Cheka are one murder. According to him, Vanka kills, Mitka kills. But does he understand that not ther Vanka, Mitka to kills, but the whole world is one murder, and Vanka, Mitka only is equitment of executions is the secular matter...
Dictatorship, the dominance of the bad over the best, more advanced, educated, noble, led to the degradation of the entire empire and gave birth to even more evil and aggressive creatures. From this broken glass of conspiracies, fraud, lies, The inability to perceive reality as such and the substitution reality an conjuncture desired targets, and desired ways to it, manipulation of public opinion with strychnine sabotage blood was pouring out and the belly was swollen from harmful motherhood and hunger. And here, wounded, bloodied with its own and other people's blood, ragged, in gray-red rags, in a lousy coarse shirt, the fragments of the Country of the Soviet Union stand barefoot on the great plain and look at the world with sharp angry eyes, promoting themselves, their influence and dominance on other countries and continents! And today and ghey stretched the tentacles of pressing, of mad wretchedness' of mental dominance out over the more progressive and perfect !
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